Low-temperature β-relaxation promotes crystallization in oxide glasses

Primary (α) structural relaxation is known to influence the nucleation behavior in glasses and it has recently been proposed to account for the so-called classical nucleation theory “breakdown” in oxide glasses around the glass transition temperature. However, it is unclear whether secondary (β-) relaxation, predominant at lower temperatures, also plays a role in promoting crystallization. Here, we study the correlation between crystallization kinetics and β-relaxation of three types of oxide glasses with distinct chemical bonds by subjecting the glasses to low-temperature annealing. We find that the activation energy of crystallization (E_a) exhibits an exponential decay with increasing annealing duration for all studied glasses. Such a decrease in E_a is found to be associated with the structural rearrangements in the glasses, especially showing a negative correlation with the enhanced atomistic interplays around modifying cations. Our findings thus point to a universal linkage between β-relaxation and nucleation kinetics in oxide network glasses.