Athermal character of the solid state amorphization of lactose induced by ball milling

In this paper, we report the possibility to reach pure glassy amorphous lactose by ball milling of crystalline α lactose under a dry nitrogen atmosphere. This route to the glassy state is found to be free of mutarotation towards the anomer β while this mutarotation is unavoidable using the usual thermal route, i.e. the quench of the liquid. This result definitely makes the ‘local quench melting’ hypothesis unsuitable to account for amorphization by ball milling.