Isotropic rotation vs. shear relaxation in supercooled liquids with globular cage molecules

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

The temperature dependence of the rotational dynamics of P4Se3 molecules in the glass-forming molecular liquid P5Se3 is studied using two-dimensional (31)P nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. Unlike typical molecular glass-forming liquids, the constituent molecules in the P5Se3 liquid perform rapid isotropic rotation without significant translational diffusion in the supercooled regime and this rotational process shows a decoupling in time scale from shear relaxation by nearly six orders of magnitude at the glass transition. This dynamical behavior of liquid-like rotation and localized translation appears to be universal to glass-forming liquids with high-symmetry globular molecules that are characterized by an underlying thermodynamically stable plastic crystal phase.