Crack propagation through phase separated glasses: effect of the characteristic size of disorder

Abstract

We perform fracture experiments on nanoscale phase separated glasses and measure crack surface roughness by atomic force microscopy. The ability of tuning the phase domain size by thermal treatment allows us to test thoroughly the predictions of crack font depinning models about the scaling properties of crack surface roughness. It appears that in the range of validity of these depinning models developed for the fracture of brittle materials, our experimental results show a quantitative agreement with theoretical predictions: beyond the characteristic size of disorder, the roughness of crack surfaces obeys the logarithmic scaling early predicted by Ramanathan, Ertas and Fisher (PRL97)