Nonequilibrium kinetics of the transformation of liquids into physical gels

© 2018 American Physical Society. A major stumbling block for statistical physics and materials science has been the lack of a universal principle that allows us to understand and predict elementary structural, morphological, and dynamical properties of nonequilibrium amorphous states of matter. The recently developed nonequilibrium self-consistent generalized Langevin equation theory, however, has been shown to provide a fundamental tool for the understanding of the most essential features of the transformation of liquids into amorphous solids, such as their aging kinetics or their dependence on the protocol of fabrication. In this work we focus on the predicted kinetics of one of the main fingerprints of the formation of gels by arrested spinodal decomposition of suddenly and deeply quenched simple liquids, namely, the arrest of structural parameters associated with the morphological evolution from the initially uniform fluid, to the dynamically arrested spongelike amorphous material. The comparison of the theoretical predictions (based on a simple specific model system), with simulation and experimental data measured on similar but more complex materials, suggests the universality of the predicted scenario.