Fine kinetics of natural physical ageing in glassy As10Se90

Sigmoid behavior of natural physical ageing in glassy As10Se90 reveals multi-step-wise growing kinetics of enthalpy losses. Phenomenological description of this kinetics can be adequately developed in terms of first-order relaxation processes, tending atomic structure from initial towards more thermodynamically equilibrium state. This kinetics is shown to obey characteristic stretched exponential behavior originated from a number of growing steps, attributed to the interconnected processes of chalcogen chain alignment and cooperative shrinkage of glass network.