METASTABLE STATE IN GLASSY CRYSTAL CYANOADAMANTANE - EXPERIMENTS AND SIMULATIONS

The role of metastable states in the whole process of vitrification is an open question. Glassy crystals which have both the phenomenologica l properties of conventional glasses and an underlying crystalline str ucture are well suited to study this affect. A metastable pseudo tetra gonal phase of cyanoadamantane has been found by differential scanning calorimetry and X-ray diffraction. The stability and the structure of this metastable phase were investigated by Monte Carlo (MC) simulatio ns while molecular dynamics (MD) simulations were used to probe the ph onon spectra. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.