Study of induced fluidity with variations of impurity in Lennard-Jones liquid

Abstract

The single component Lennard-Jones (LJ) liquid at lower temperatures crystallizes, while glass transition occurs in the LJ binary mixture used in the study by Kob and Anderson (KABLJ system) (PRL 73, 1376 (1994)) with minority component (B particle). Molecular dynamics simulations are performed in supercooled pure LJ system, and also with the variations in composition of the minority components of KABLJ to see the effects of increment in B (impurity) on the relaxation dynamics. This study shows that even a small proportion of the minority components act like defects in the lattice and lowers the temperature at which the system freezes. The microscopic density relaxations of A and B are comparable at higher concentration of the impurities. We show the onset of glassiness in the supercooled states of these liquids near their phase boundary as impurity increase.