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Little evidence for dynamic divergences in ultraviscous molecular liquids

Nature Physics volume 4, pages 737–741 (2008)Cite this article

Abstract

The physics of the ultraviscous liquid phase preceding glass formation continues to pose major problems that remain unsolved. It is actively debated, for instance, whether the marked increase of the relaxation time reflects an underlying phase transition to a state of infinite relaxation time. To elucidate the empirical evidence for this intriguing scenario, some of the most accurate relaxation-time data available for any class of ultraviscous liquids—those obtained by dielectric relaxation experiments on organic liquids just above the glass transition—were compiled. Analysis of data for 42 liquids shows that there is no compelling evidence for the Vogel–Fulcher–Tammann (VFT) prediction that the relaxation time diverges at a finite temperature. We conclude that theories with a dynamic divergence of the VFT form lack a direct experimental basis.

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Figure 1: Relaxation time as a function of temperature for typical organic liquids supercooled into the ultraviscous phase.
Figure 2: Relaxation time data identified from dielectric loss peaks for all of the 42 organic ultraviscous liquids used in the analysis.
Figure 3: The VFT and Avramov equations compared with data.
Figure 4: Temperature indices.
Figure 5: Standard deviation from fits to data of the VFT equation and two alternative fitting functions with the same number of parameters but no dynamic divergence, FF1 and FF2 of equations (6) and (7).

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Acknowledgements

For kindly providing data to this study, we are indebted to S. Benkhof, T. Blochowicz, T. Christensen, L. F. del Castillo, R. Diaz-Calleja, L.-T. Duong, K. Duvvuri, G. Eska, C. Gainaru, A. Garcia-Bernabe, S. Hensel-Bielowka, W. Huang, N. Ito, B. Jakobsen, E. Kaminska, M. Koehler, A. Kudlik, A. Loidl, P. Lunkenheimer, D. V. Matyushov, M. Mierzwa, P. Medick, K. L. Ngai, K. Niss, V. N. Novikov, M. Paluch, S. Pawlus, L. C. Pardo, S. Putselyk, E. L. Quitevis, J. R. Rajian, R. Richert, A. Rivera, E. A. Rössler, M. J. Sanchis, N.V. Surovtsev, C. Tschirwitz, L.-M. Wang and J. Wiedersich. The centre for viscous liquid dynamics ‘Glass and Time’ is sponsored by the Danish National Research Foundation (DNRF).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sciences, DNRF Centre ‘Glass and Time’, IMFUFA, Roskilde University, DK-4000 Roskilde, Postbox 260, Denmark

    Tina Hecksher, Albena I. Nielsen, Niels Boye Olsen & Jeppe C. Dyre

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  1. Tina Hecksher
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  2. Albena I. Nielsen
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Project planning and data analysis were carried out by T.H. and J.C.D., experimental work by A.I.N. and N.B.O.

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Correspondence to Jeppe C. Dyre.

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Hecksher, T., Nielsen, A., Olsen, N. et al. Little evidence for dynamic divergences in ultraviscous molecular liquids. Nature Phys 4, 737–741 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys1033

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