Polarizability of Aspirin at Terahertz Frequencies Using Terahertz Time Domain Spectroscopy (THz-TDS)

A novel application of terahertz time-domain spectroscopy (THz-TDS) is described for the determination of permittivity and polarizability of organic crystals, as exemplified by measurements with the polymorph I form of crystalline aspirin (acetylsalicylic acid). The coherent nature of the THz pulse experiment, coupled with gated-detection, permits direct measure of differences in the phase angle of the electric field vector after passing through a pellet composed of the aspirin crystals embedded within an inert polymer matrix. An effective media model is used to extract dielectric information for the crystals from the measured time-domain signal that is representative of the entire pellet composition. Polarizability is then obtained for these organic crystals by using the Clausius-Mossotti relationship. Dielectric spectra and polarizability spectra are presented over the 0.3-3 THz frequency range (10-100 cm^-1). The average polarizability values measured over the low frequency range (10-20 cm^-1) are 22.4 ± 0.3 and 22.4 ± 0.5 ų for aspirin crystals embedded within matrixes of polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) and polyethylene (PE), respectively.