Dynamics of monohydroxy alcohols: Rouse dynamics, chain swapping, and the Debye relaxation

Monohydroxy alcohols (MAs) exhibit an intriguing strong dielectric dispersion, the Debye relaxation, at time scales much longer than their structural relaxation, whose origin remains active discussion. Through a combination of rheology and dielectric, we have unraveled new features of the dynamics of MAs from their structural relaxation to the Debye time [1,2]. In particular, our observations showed the following: (i) an interesting relationship between the structural relaxation time, tau_alpha, and the Debye time, tau_D, with tau_D^2/tau_alpha following an Arrhenius temperature dependence; (ii) the presence of an intermediate relaxation process with characteristic time, tau_m, between tau_alpha and tau_D of MAs that are both dielectric and rheology active; (iii) agrees excellently with the hydrogen bonding exchange time of MAs from NMR measurements. These observations lead to a novel theoretical understanding of the dynamics of MAs across different time scales, i.e., the living polymer model. We will discuss these findings and the details of the theoretical development in the presentation