Determination of the barrier height of a crystalline dipolar molecular rotor directly from temperature‐dependent dielectric spectra

Abstract

AbstractAn explicit relation between half‐width at half‐maximum ΔT in a dissipation factor of dipolar molecular rotors in a solid phase and rotational barrier height Ub was derived within the Debye relaxation model. The formula for Ub is simply expressed as . Here, T* is the temperature at the peak position in the dissipation factor, and k is the Boltzmann constant. The formula is an alternative to the familiar Arrhenius equation, from which Ub has so far been estimated in various dielectric experiments. The distinction of the proposed formula is the determination of Ub from a single peak in a dissipation factor induced by an electric field, while the Arrhenius equation needs data for the magnitudes of the dissipation factor and temperatures at several peaks. By applying the proposed formula to dipole molecular rotors (ROT‐2F) in a single crystalline and polycrystalline, for which Ub values were reported (Horansky et al., Phys. Rev. B 74, 054306 [2006]), the calculated values of Ub were quantitatively reproduced. This indicates the validity of the proposed formula, and the formula is expected to be applied to the analysis of dielectric spectra of 2D dipolar molecular rotor systems.