Polymer Glass Formation: Role of Activation Free Energy, Configurational Entropy, and Collective Motion

We provide a perspective on polymer glass formation, with an emphasis on models in which the fluid entropy and collective particle motion dominate the theoretical description and data analysis. We first discuss the dynamics of liquids in the high temperature Arrhenius regime, where transition state theory is formally applicable. We then summarize the evolution of the entropy theory from a qualitative framework for organizing and interpreting...