School on glass formers and glasses
Ranjini Bandyopadhyay and Jaydeep Basu Lectures

5, 19 & 20 January, 2010

Experimental techniques

Outline : January 5, 2010

Lecture : (RB) : Experimental Techniques 1: Rheology and Dielectric Spectroscopy

  1. Making glasses in the laboratory (a brief overview)   The properties of glasses that we want to measure (an introduction to techniques ; details later during   subsequent  lectures on experimental techniques)
  2. Rheology Basics of rheology (Viscoelasticity and how do we measure it?) ;Instrumentation (How does a rheometer work?); Discussion of various rheological measurement technique/s (which rheological properties of glasses do we usually measure in the laboratory and how does the rheometer measure them?); Measuring the viscosities of glass forming systems (Dynamic Mechanical Analysis;Tg measurements, linear and nonlinear rheology of glassy liquids); Nonlinear relaxation and aging; stress relaxation; creep measurements, frequency and amplitude sweep experiments ; Measuring the slow dynamics and aging in soft glasses (Mode-coupling theory and colloidal hard sphere glasses; experiments on soft systems showing soft glassy rheology, large amplitude oscillatory sweep experiments, strain rate frequency superposition (SRFS) measurements)
  3. Dielectric Spectroscopy Dielectric relaxation; Basics of dielectric spectroscopy; measuring the frequency and temperature depende relaxation spectra of glassy materials; measuring the relaxation time spectrum

Lecture: (JKB) : Experimental Techniques 1 : DSC, MDSC, Imaging

  1. Calorimetry   Basics of Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC); modulated DSC (MDSC); instrumentation; estimation of specific heat and related thermodynamic parameters.
  2. Imaging/Microscopy Laser scanning confocal microscopy (LSCM) – basics; Single Molecule Spectroscopy (SMS); applications of LSCM and SMS to glassy dynamics of soft matter; estimation of dynamic heterogeneity.

 

Outline : January 19 , 2010

Lecture: (JKB) : X-ray & Neutron Scattering Studies of Microscopic Dynamics in Glasses

  1. X ray and Neutron Scattering   Basic properties of synchrotron X-ray and Neutron Scattering
  2. X- ray photon correlation spectroscopy (XPCS);
  3. Inelastic x-ray scattering;
  4. Neutron Spin Echo (NSE);
  5. Back scattering spectroscopy; application to study of glassy dynamics in different time and spatial domains

 
Outline: January 20, 2010

Lecture: (RB) : Experimental Techniques 2: Dielectric spectroscopy and Light scattering

  1. Dielectric Spectroscopy Dielectric relaxation; Basics of dielectric spectroscopy; measuring the frequency and temperature depende relaxation spectra of glassy materials; measuring the relaxation time spectrum
  2. Light scattering (Rayleigh scattering; basics of Dynamic Light Scattering and Diffusive Wave Spectroscopy) (a) Measuring the relaxation processes in glassy materials; measurements of aging (b) Speckle Visibility Spectroscopy (SVS) to measure the slow, non-stationary dynamics of jammed systems (c) Time Resolved Correlation (TRC) Spectroscopy to study the dynamics of a variety of jammed, or glassy, soft materials (d) A quick refresher on rheology experiments; the complementary natures of rheology and light scattering techniques to understand the relaxation dynamics of glassy materials
  3. XPCS (how is it different from light scattering and when do we need to use it? The discussion will be restricted to my own work on aging clay suspensions)

 

Lecture: (Takeshi Egami) NMR and Raman Spectroscopy to Study the Structure and Dynamics of Glasses

References and Suggested Reading

  1. Rheology: Principles, Measurements and Applications, by C. W. Macosko, Wiley-VCH, 1994.
  2. The Structure and Rheology of Complex Fluids, by R. G. Larson, Oxford, 1999.
  3. Dynamic Light Scattering: with applications to Chemistry, Biology and Physics, by B. J. Berne and R. Pecora, Dover, 2000.
  4. Soft and Fragile Matter: Nonequilibrium dynamics, metastability and flow, edited by M. E. Cates and M. R. Evans, Institute of Physics, 2001.
  5. Differential Scanning Calorimetry, G.W.H. Höhne, , H.-J. Flammersheim,W.F. Hemminger Springer (2003).
  6. Polymers and Neutron Scattering, Julia Higgins and Henry Benoit, Oxford University Press (1997).
  7. Fundamentals of Neutron Spin Echo Spectroscopy, F Mezei, Lecture Notes in Physics, Vol 201, Springer (2003).