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 Delta epsilon=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. (C) 2008 American Institute of Physics.