Consequences of applying Scaife's remarks to the comparison of dielectric and viscoelastic dispersions in polymers

Abstract

The recommendation made by Scaife, that dielectric relaxation data of polar liquids should be compared as complex polarizability rather than the complex dielectric constant (complex permittivity) is extended to the comparison of dielectric and viscoelastic relaxation data of polymers. The viscoelastic analogue of the complex polarizability, i.e. complex distortability, is constructed and compared to its dielectric counterpart. When such comparisons are made for the glassy phase transition (alpha processes) of polymers, the relaxation times instead of differing by several orders of magnitude are now very similar. These results experimentally verify Scaife's recommendation. The cavity models of Glarum and Cole are examined for the case of polymers. The Kirkwood electrostatic interactions assumed to represent long range correlations for polar substances are not valid so that the fortuitous cancellation of terms does not take place. In other words a critical analysis of these cavity models leads to the same conclusion as those made by Scaife.