Physical vapor deposition of a polyamorphic system: Triphenyl phosphite

In situ AC nanocalorimetry and dielectric spectroscopy were used to analyze films of vapor-deposited triphenyl phosphite. The goal of this work was to investigate the properties of vapor-deposited glasses of this known polyamorphic system and to determine which liquid is formed when the glass is heated. We find that triphenyl phosphite forms a kinetically stable glass when prepared at substrate temperatures of 0.75-0.95T_g, where T_g is the glass transition temperature. Regardless of the substrate temperature utilized during deposition of triphenyl phosphite, heating a vapor-deposited glass always forms the ordinary supercooled liquid (liquid 1). The identity of liquid 1 was confirmed by both the calorimetric signal and the shape and position of the dielectric spectra. For the purposes of comparison, the glacial phase of triphenyl phosphite (liquid 2) was prepared by the conventional method of annealing liquid 1. We speculate that these new results and previous work on vapor deposition of other polyamorphic systems can be explained by the free surface structure being similar to one polyamorph even in a temperature regime where the other polyamorph is more thermodynamically stable in the bulk.