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The disordered nature of glass-forming melts results in two features for its dynamics i.e. non-Arrhenius and non-exponential behavior. Their macroscopic properties are studied through observing spatial heterogeneity of the molecular relaxation. Experiments performed in a low-frequency range tracks the flow of energy in time on slow degrees of freedom and

The disordered nature of glass-forming melts results in two features for its dynamics i.e. non-Arrhenius and non-exponential behavior. Their macroscopic properties are studied through observing spatial heterogeneity of the molecular relaxation. Experiments performed in a low-frequency range tracks the flow of energy in time on slow degrees of freedom and transfer to the vibrational heat bath of the liquid, as is the case for microwave heating. High field measurements on supercooled liquids result in generation of fictive temperatures of the absorbing modes which eventually result in elevated true bath temperatures. The absorbed energy allows us to quantify the changes in the 'configurational', real sample, and electrode temperatures. The slow modes absorb energy on the structural relaxation time scale causing the increase of configurational temperature resulting in the rise of dielectric loss. Time-resolved high field dielectric relaxation experiments show the impact of 'configurational heating' for low frequencies of the electric field and samples that are thermally clamped to a thermostat. Relevant thermal behavior of monohydroxy alcohols is considerably different from the cases of simple non-associating liquids, due to their distinct origins of the prominent dielectric loss. Monohydroxy alcohols display very small changes due to observed nonthermal effects without increasing sample temperature. These changes have been reflected in polymers in our measurements.
ContributorsPathak, Ullas (Author) / Richert, Ranko (Thesis advisor) / Dai, Lenore (Thesis advisor) / Nielsen, David (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
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Description
We studied the relationship between the polarizability and the molecular conductance

that arises in the response of a molecule to an external electric field. To illustrate

the plausibility of the idea, we used Simmons' tunneling model, which describes image

charge and dielectric effects on electron transport through a barrier. In such a

model, the

We studied the relationship between the polarizability and the molecular conductance

that arises in the response of a molecule to an external electric field. To illustrate

the plausibility of the idea, we used Simmons' tunneling model, which describes image

charge and dielectric effects on electron transport through a barrier. In such a

model, the barrier height depends on the dielectric constant of the electrode-molecule-electrode junction, which in turn can be approximately expressed in terms of the

molecular polarizability via the classical Clausius-Mossotti relation. In addition to

using the tunneling model, the validity of the relationships between the molecular

polarizability and the molecular conductance was tested by comparing calculated

and experimentally measured conductance of different chemical structures ranging

from covalent bonded to non-covalent bonded systems. We found that either using

the tunneling model or the first-principle calculated quantities or experimental data,

the conductance decreases as the molecular polarizability increases. In contrast to

this strong correlation, our results showed that in some cases there was a weaker or

none correlation between the conductance and other molecular electronic properties

including HOMO-LUMO gap, chemical geometries, and interactions energies. All

these results together suggest that using the molecular polarizability as a molecular

descriptor for conductance can offer some advantages compared to using other

molecular electronic properties and can give additional insight about the electronic

transport property of a junction.

These results also show the validity of the physically intuitive picture that to a first

approximation a molecule in a junction behaves as a dielectric that is polarized in the

opposite sense of the applied bias, thereby creating an interfacial barrier that hampers

tunneling. The use of the polarizability as a descriptor of molecular conductance offers

signicant conceptual and practical advantages over a picture based in molecular

orbitals. Despite the simplicity of our model, it sheds light on a hitherto neglected

connection between molecular polarizability and conductance and paves the way for

further conceptual and theoretical developments.

The results of this work was sent to two publications. One of them was accepted

in the International Journal of Nanotechnology (IJNT) and the other is still under

review in the Journal of Physical Chemistry C.
ContributorsVatan Meidanshahi, Reza (Author) / Mujica, Vladimiro (Thesis advisor) / Chizmeshya, Andrew (Committee member) / Richert, Ranko (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014