Self-Diffusion of Supercooled o-Terphenyl near the Glass Transition Temperature

Self-diffusion coefficients for the low molecular weight glass former o-terphenyl have been measured near Tg by isothermally desorbing thin film bilayers of deuterio and protio o-terphenyl in a vacuum chamber. We observe translational diffusion that is about 100 times faster at Tg + 3 K than the Stokes-Einstein prediction. Predictions from random first order transition theory and a dynamic facilitation approach are in reasonable agreement with our results; in these approaches, enhanced translational diffusion is associated with spatially heterogeneous dynamics. Self-diffusion controls crystallization in o-terphenyl for most of the supercooled liquid regime, but at temperatures below Tg + 10 K, the reported crystallization rate increases suddenly while the self-diffusion coefficient does not. This work and previous work on trisnaphthylbenzene both find a self-diffusion-controlled crystal growth regime and an enhancement in self-diffusion near Tg, suggesting that these phenomena are general characteristics of fragile low molecular weight glass formers. We discuss the width of the relaxation time distributions of o-terphenyl and trisnaphthylbenzene as they relate to the observation of enhanced translational diffusion.