Slow regions percolate near glass transition

A nanosecond scale in situ probe reveals that a bulk linear polymer undergoes a sharp phase transition as a function of the degree of conversion, as it nears the glass transition. The scaling behaviour is in the same universality class as percolation. The exponents γ and β are found to be 1.7 ± 0.1 and 0.41 ± 0.01 in agreement with the best percolation results in three dimensions.