Abstract
In this work, we report on a detailed study of the diffusional and vibrational dynamics of liquid ethylene glycol (EG: HO–CH2CH2–OH) in the bulk state and confined in a matrix of sol-gel porous glass with 26 Å interconnected cylindrical pores. The investigation is performed, by incoherent quasielastic and inelastic neutron scattering (IQENS and IINS), as a function of temperature. IQENS data have been definitively interpreted in terms of the α-relaxation dynamics predicted by mode coupling theory for supercooled liquids. We verified that a description by means of an Havriliak–Negami profile is consistent with the measured spectral line shape. Furthermore, IINS spectra show a clear different evolution versus T of the vibrational density of states, Z(ω), passing from the bulk samples to the confined ones, revealing, in particular, a thermal stabilization of the disordered longitudinal acoustic mode induced by interaction of EG molecules with the active silanol (Si–OH) groups of the surface.
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