Glass Transition

The glass–liquid transition (or glass transition for short) is the reversible transition in amorphous materials (or in amorphous regions within semicrystalline materials) from a hard and relatively brittle state into a molten or rubber-like state. An amorphous solid that exhibits a glass transition is called a glass. Supercooling a viscous liquid into the glass state is called vitrification, from the Latin vitreum, "glass" via French vitrifier.

Despite the massive change in the physical properties of a material through its glass transition, the transition is not itself a phase transition of any kind; rather it is a laboratory phenomenon extending over a range of temperature and defined by one of several conventions. Such conventions include a constant cooling rate (20 K/min) and a viscosity threshold of 1012 Pa·s, among others. Upon cooling or heating through this glass-transition range, the material also exhibits a smooth step in the thermal-expansion coefficient and in the specific heat, with the location of these effects again being dependent on the history of the material. However, the question of whether some phase transition underlies the glass transition is a matter of continuing research.

The glass-transition temperature T_g is always lower than the melting temperature, T_m, of the crystalline state of the material, if one exists.