Two-Step Aging of Highly Polar Glass

Nongeneric structural-relaxation shape of supercooled liquids: Insights from linear and nonlinear experiments on propylene glycol

Currently, there is a debate whether the structural relaxation of polar liquids is more faithfully reflected (i) by the generically shaped response detected by dynamic light scattering or rather (ii) by the slower, more stretched, system-dependent susceptibility response recorded by dielectric spectroscopy. In this work, nonlinearly induced transients probing structural relaxation reveal that near the glass transition, alternative (ii) is appropriate for propylene glycol. Results from shear rheology and from calorimetry corroborate this finding, underscoring the previously advanced notion (Moch et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 128, 228001, 2022) that the reorientationally probed structural susceptibility of viscous liquids displays a nongeneric spectral shape.

New Insights from Nonequilibrium Kinetics Studies on Highly Polar S-Methoxy-PC Infiltrated into Pores

Herein, the annealing of highly polar (S)-(-)-4-methoxymethyl-1,3-dioxolan-2-one (S-methoxy-PC) within alumina and silica porous membranes characterized by different pore diameters was studied by means of dielectric spectroscopy. We found a significant slowing down of the structural dynamics of confined S-methoxy-PC with annealing time below and, surprisingly, also above the glass transition temperatures of the interfacial layer, T_{g,interfacial}. Furthermore, unexpectedly, a change in the slope of temperature dependencies of the characteristic time scale of this process τ_anneal, at T_{g,interfacial} for all confined samples, was reported. By modeling τ_anneal(T), we noted that the observed enormous variation of τ_anneal results from a decrease of the pore radius due to the vitrification of the interfacial molecules. This indicates that the enhanced dynamics of confined materials upon cooling is mainly controlled by the interfacial molecules.

Computational Evidence for the Crucial Role of Dipole Cross-Correlations in Polar Glass-Forming Liquids

In this Letter, we analyze the dipole-dipole correlations obtained from the molecular dynamics simulations for strongly and weakly polar model liquids. As a result, we find that the cross-correlations' contribution to the system's total dipole moment correlation function, which is directly measured in the dielectric spectroscopy experiment, is negligible for weakly polar liquids. In contrast, the cross-correlations' term dominates over the self-correlations' term for the examined strongly polar liquid. Consequently, our studies strongly support the interpretation of the dielectric spectra nature of glass-forming liquids recently proposed by Pabst et al.

Molecular Cross-correlations Govern Structural Rearrangements in a Nonassociating Polar Glass Former

Self- and cross-correlation dynamics of deeply supercooled liquids were recently identified using photon correlation spectroscopy on the one hand and dielectric investigations on the other. These results fueled a controversial discussion whether the "generic" response identified by photon correlation spectroscopy, or rather the nonuniversal dielectric response, reflect the liquid's structural relaxation. The present study employs physical aging and oscillatory shear rheology to directly access the structural relaxation of a nonassociating glass-forming liquid and reveals that collective equilibrium fluctuations of simple liquids and not single-particle dynamics govern their structural relaxation. The present results thus challenge recent views that the glassy response of polar supercooled liquids can generically be decomposed into a Debye-type, supramolecular response and a single-particle dynamics with the latter reflecting the "true" structural relaxation. Furthermore, the current findings underscore the pivotal role dielectric spectroscopy plays in glass science as one of the rare molecular-level reorientation techniques that senses dynamical cooperativity directly.