Anisotropy and anharmonicity in polystyrene stable glass

Abstract

We have used ellipsometry to characterize the anisotropy in stable polymer glasses prepared by physical vapor deposition. These measurements reveal birefringence values (as measured by the magnitude of in-plane vs out-of-plane refractive index) less than 0.002 in vapor-deposited polystyrenes with N from 6 to 12 and with fictive temperatures between 10 K and 35 K below the Tg values. We have measured the thermal expansivity of these stable glasses and compared to ordinary rejuvenated glass. The thermal expansivity of the stable glasses is less than that of ordinary glass with a difference that increases as the fictive temperature Tf decreases.