Reorientations in supercooled glycerol studied by two-dimensional time-domain deuteron nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy

The method of stimulated echoes was used to investigate the reorientational mechanism in the selectively deuterated glass-former glycerol, C(3)D(5)(OH)(3) about 15 K above its calorimetric glass temperature. The reorientation process is fully isotropic. This enables an accurate determination of the decay constant, T(1Q), of the quadrupolar spin order in the regime of ultraslow motion. The knowledge of this time constant has made it possible to reliably determine the rotational correlation function. The experimentally obtained evolution time-dependent correlation functions are compared with those from a simulation procedure involving a distribution of molecular jump angles. It is found that in glycerol small angles in the 2 degrees-3 degrees range dominate. They are accompanied by a small, but significant, fraction of larger jump angles. (C) 1998 American Institute of Physics. [S0021-9606(98)50724-6].