Strong pretransitional anomaly near glass transition

TL;DR

This paper reports the first observation of a strong pretransitional anomaly in supercooled liquid-crystalline systems near the glass transition, indicating a possible thermodynamic nature of the transition.

Contribution

It presents novel experimental evidence of a critical-like pretransitional effect in absorption peak behavior near the glass transition.

Findings

Observation of a critical-like anomaly with exponent 0.5

Correlation with static electric permittivity results

Implication of thermodynamic character of glass transition

Abstract

In this report we present the first ever results of strong pretransitional effect observed for the maximum of absorption peak $${\epsilon}_{max}^{''}(T)$$ in supercooled liquid-crystalline systems near the glass transition temperature. This anomaly may be described by critical-like relation with critical exponent {\alpha}=0.5, which corresponds well with previous results for static electric permittivity $${\epsilon}_{s}(T)$$. Such a behaviour may suggest thermodynamic character of glass transition.