Eur. Phys. J. Special Topics 226, 323-329 (2017)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjst/e2016-60175-x

Regular Article

Relaxation functions and dynamical heterogeneities in a model of chemical gel interfering with glass transition

¹ Dipartimento di Fisica, “Ettore Pancini”, Università di Napoli “Federico II”, Complesso Universitario di Monte Sant'Angelo, via Cintia, 80126 Napoli, Italy
² CNR-SPIN, via Cintia, 80126 Napoli, Italy
³ INFN, Sezione di Napoli, via Cintia, 80126 Napoli, Italy
⁴ UC Simulation Center, University of Cincinnati, and Procter & Gamble Co., Cincinnati, Ohio 45219, USA
⁵ Division of Physics and Applied Physics, School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 637371, Singapore

^a e-mail: antonio.decandia@unina.it

Received: 7 June 2016
Revised: 26 August 2016
Published online: 6 March 2017

Abstract

We investigate the heterogeneous dynamics in a model, where chemical gelation and glass transition interplay, focusing on the dynamical susceptibility. Two independent mechanisms give raise to the correlations, which are manifested in the dynamical susceptibility: one is related to the presence of permanent clusters, while the other is due to the increase of particle crowding as the glass transition is approached. The superposition of these two mechanisms originates a variety of different behaviours. We show that these two mechanisms can be unentangled considering the wave vector dependence of the dynamical susceptibility.