Segmental Relaxation of Poly(styrene-co-vinylphenol)

Adam–Gibbs model for the supercooled dynamics in the ortho-terphenyl ortho-phenylphenol mixture

Dielectric measurements of the alpha-relaxation time were carried out on a mixture of ortho-terphenyl (OTP) with ortho-phenylphenol, over a range of temperatures at two pressures, 0.1 and 28.8 MPa. These are the same conditions for which heat capacity, thermal expansivity, and compressibility measurements were reported by Takahara et al. [S. Takahara, M. Ishikawa, O. Yamamuro, and T. Matsuo, J. Phys. Chem. B 103, 3288 (1999)] for the same mixture. From the combined dynamic and thermodynamic data, we determine that density and temperature govern to an equivalent degree the variation of the relaxation times with temperature. Over the measured range, the dependence of the relaxation times on configurational entropy is in accord with the Adam-Gibbs model, and this dependence is invariant to pressure. Consistent with the implied connection between relaxation and thermodynamic properties, the kinetic and thermodynamic fragilities are found to have the same pressure independence. In comparing the relaxation properties of the mixture to those of neat OTP, density effects are stronger in the former, perhaps suggestive of less efficient packing.