Effect of the initial stage of annealing on modeling of enthalpy relaxation in a hyperquenched glass

One of the major challenges in glass relaxation study is to establish a universal model describing the enthalpy relaxation in both the hyperquenched glass (HQG) (i.e., far from equilibrium) and the partially annealed hyperquenched glass (AHQG). In particular, the detailed features of the enthalpy relaxation in both HQG and AHQG during the initial stage of both the sub-Tg and above-Tg annealing cannot be captured by the existing models. In this Letter we show that the combination of a modified stretched exponential equation [M. Peyron, et al., J. Magn. Reson, Series A 118 (1996) 214] and the recently proposed composite relaxation function [L. Hornboell, et al., Chem. Phys. Lett. 1-3 (2010) 37] is a reasonable approach for describing those features. In addition, our modeling results imply that the structural heterogeneity plays a crucial role in relaxation of HQG.