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Updated: Apr 16, 2026

Hyperspectral Imaging as a Tool to Study Optical Anisotropy in Lanthanide-Based Molecular Single Crystals
Published on: April 14, 2020
Cooperativity and heterogeneity in plastic crystals studied by nonlinear dielectric spectroscopy
M Michl1, Th Bauer1, P Lunkenheimer1
1Experimental Physics V, Center for Electronic Correlations and Magnetism, University of Augsburg, 86159 Augsburg, Germany.
Abstract:
The glassy dynamics of plastic-crystalline cyclo-octanol and ortho-carborane, where only the molecular reorientational degrees of freedom freeze without long-range order, is investigated by nonlinear dielectric spectroscopy. Marked differences to canonical glass formers show up: While molecular cooperativity governs the glassy freezing, it leads to a much weaker slowing down of molecular dynamics than in supercooled liquids. Moreover, the observed nonlinear effects cannot be explained with the same heterogeneity scenario recently applied to canonical glass formers. This supports ideas that molecular relaxation in plastic crystals may be intrinsically nonexponential. Finally, no nonlinear effects were detected for the secondary processes in cyclo-octanol.
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