mesoscopic and atomic structural evolution during high pressure coalescence of amorphous silica nano-particle

The optimization of the mechanical properties of amorphous silica is of great interest due to its preponderant role in the industrially relevant compositions and its position as the archetypal fully-polymerized glass. Recently, the enhancement of the glass ductility was suggested from molecular dynamics simulations after the coalescence of amorphous silica nanoparticles (NPs) under high pressure. Here, we propose to monitor the morphology of the network formed by the NPs at the relevant length-scales during the coalescence process under pressure. For this, we plan to use simultaneous small- and wide-angle x-ray scattering performed in-situ on NPs contained within a resistively heated diamond anvil cell. This will allow us to extract the meaningful structural information at the mesoscopic and atomic length scales during a systematic exploration of the P-T space already defined from ex-situ measurements