Comparing two sources of physical aging: Temperature vs electric field

Jan P Gabriel; Ranko Richert

doi:10.1063/5.0176957

Comparing two sources of physical aging: Temperature vs electric field

J Chem Phys. 2023 Oct 28;159(16):164502. doi: 10.1063/5.0176957.

Authors

Jan P Gabriel¹, Ranko Richert²

Affiliations

¹ Glass and Time, IMFUFA, Department of Science and Environment, Roskilde University, 4000 Roskilde, Denmark.
² School of Molecular Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona 85287, USA.

PMID: 37877489
DOI: 10.1063/5.0176957

Abstract

Physical aging is the process of a system evolving toward a new equilibrium, and thus the response to a change in external parameters such as temperature T, pressure p, or static electric field E. Using a static electric field has been shown to access physical aging above the glass transition temperature Tg, in the regime of milliseconds or faster, but the relation to its temperature jump counterpart has not been investigated to date. This work compares temperature and field induced physical aging in the limit of small perturbations for supercooled tributyl phosphate. It is found that both structural recovery dynamics are very similar, and that they match the collective reorientational dynamics as observed by dielectric relaxation. The results facilitate expanding the range of aging experiments to well above Tg, where a comparison with structural relaxation in equilibrium is straightforward, thus improving models of structural recovery and physical aging.