Dynamics of glass-forming liquids. VI. Dielectric relaxation study of neat decahydro-naphthalene

We have measured the dielectric relaxation of neat cis/trans-decahydro-naphthalene (decalin) in its supercooled regime as a function of temperature. The fragility of this nonaromatic molecular glass former is extremely high, m=147, and the distribution of relaxation times in terms of the stretching exponent is accordingly wide, β≈0.33. Regarding molecular organic liquids, such high fragilities have been observed before only for aromatic systems, e.g., toluene and triphenyl-phosphite. It turns out that the structural relaxation of neat decaline differs significantly from that of the 17.2 mol % chlorobenzene doped counterpart reported earlier.