A new room temperature viscoelastic inorganic glass

Inorganic glass is a non-crystalline material that lacks of a regular, periodic atomic or molecular structure, and are considered as frozen liquids because of the similarity between their static amorphous structures. The atoms and molecules in the glass can gradually rearrange and realign with time, giving rise to deformation or aging in most glass materials. However, viscoelastic behavior could not be readily observable at room temperature (RT) due to its long time scale. The paper introduce and comment a recent work published in Nature Energy, which discover a new class of viscoelastic inorganic glass with Tg well below RT. The VIGLAS is simply synthesized through adding high content of oxygen into tetrachloroaluminates to replace chlorine. The VIGLAS exhibits characteristics similar to both inorganic ceramics and organic polymers, which are particularly relevant in the realm of battery electrolytes where a balance between ionic conductivity and chemo-mechanical compatibility is crucial.