Liquid dynamics in partially crystalline glycerol

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We present a dielectric study on the dynamics of supercooled glycerol during crystallization. We explore the transformation into a solid phase in real time by monitoring the temporal evolution of the amplitude of the dielectric signal. Neither the initial nucleation or the crystal growth influence the liquid dynamics visibly. For one of the samples studied, a tiny fraction of glycerol remained in the disordered state after the end of the transition. We examined the nature of the alpha relaxation in this frustrated crystal and find that it is virtually identical to the bulk dynamics. In addition to that, we have found no evidence that supercooled glycerol transforms into a peculiar phase where either a new solid amorphous state or nano-crystals dispersed in a liquid matrix are formed.