Interpreting dielectric relaxation measurements

The amount of information that can be obtained about the relaxation process from a single measurement in either the time or frequency domain is limited. However by making use of another variable, such as temperature or pressure, further insight into the nature of the relaxation process can be gained. Published data from a number of sources for relaxation in polyethylene will be reported and it will be shown that the β process of relaxation, commonly observed in the region of 200 K, can be associated with thermally assisted quantum mechanical tunnelling of protonic charges between close neighbour sites