Multiple Mechanical Relaxations in Ethylcyclohexane above the Glass Transition Temperature

Dynamics of glass-forming liquids. XIV. A search for ultraslow dielectric relaxation in glycerol

A recent dielectric study of various polyalcohols reported on the general occurrence of an ultraslow process with Debye type character in hydrogen bonded liquids [R. Bergman, H. Jansson, and J. Swenson, J. Chem. Phys. 132, 044504 (2010)], whereas previous work suggested that such behavior is specific to monoalcohols only. Clarifying this issue is highly relevant for assessing models aimed at rationalizing these modes that are slower than the primary structural relaxation and associated with a single time constant. To this end, the dielectric relaxation of glycerol is measured at different electrode distances with high accuracy. In this manner, electrode polarization can be separated from the dielectric signals intrinsic in the supercooled liquid. In the frequency range below the loss peak frequency omega(max) of the alpha-process, only dc-conductivity is required to understand the dielectric properties of supercooled glycerol within a margin of epsilon(") approximately +/-0.1 and thus no indication of an ultraslow peak is found. More quantitatively, any dielectric Debye like mode located around 10(-5)omega(max) would need to have an amplitude smaller than 0.4% of that of the primary dielectric process to be consistent with the present findings, in contrast to previous claims of >50%.

Dynamics of glass-forming liquids. XII. Dielectric study of primary and secondary relaxations in ethylcyclohexane

The dynamics of ethylcyclohexane are investigated by high resolution dielectric spectroscopy aiming to characterize the relevant relaxational features of this simple system in its fluid, supercooled liquid, and glassy states. The dielectric signature of structural relaxation is a primary loss peak with amplitude Deltaepsilon=0.01, and a secondary loss process is found in the glassy state. This beta relaxation is compared with a "slow" process revealed by ultrasonics and with previously found gamma and chi processes in similar materials containing the cyclohexyl group. The results suggest that this secondary process is an intramolecular mode rather than a Johari-Goldstein process, consistent with its persistence in the liquid state at slow relaxation times which exceed those of the alpha process. The dielectric activity of such a slow process requires that the dipole magnitude changes with the intramolecular transition, whereas a change in dipole direction only would be masked by the faster structural relaxation.