Dynamic shear modulus of glycerol: corrections due to instrument compliance.

A recent article by Shi et al. [J. Chem. Phys.123, 174507 (2005)] reports results from mechanical measurements on three simple inorganic glass formers: glycerol, m-toluidine, and sucrose benzoate. The experiments carried out were stress relaxation, aging, and dynamic (all in shear) using a torsional rheometer, an advanced rheometric expansion system (TA Instruments). The original force rebalance transducer (2KFRT) supplied with the system was replaced with a custom-made load cell (Sensotec) that had a capacity of 20 000 g cm in torque and 5000 g in normal force. The replacement of the load cell was done due to the belief that the main source of compliance in this instrument was from the 2KFRT. With this assumption, the authors published their results for the three materials of interest and compared their results with the techniques of Schroter and Donth [J. Chem. Phys.113, 9101 (2000)] for the measurements on glycerol and reported important differences. These differences were disputed by one of the present authors (Schroter), and the present report shows that the results from Schroter and Donth are correct. We show that the reasons have to do with the instrument compliance being greater than originally thought by Shi et al. Here we examine the effects of platen diameter/geometry on the glycerol dynamic moduli, describe a means to correct dynamic data, present a revised comparison of the corrected data with that of Schroter and Donth, and provide a discussion of future work and conclusions.