Secondary relaxations in supercooled and glassy sucrose–borate aqueous solutions Original Research Article

The dielectric relaxation spectra of concentrated aqueous solutions of sucrose–borate mixtures have been measured in the supercooled and glassy regions in the frequency range of 40 Hz to 2 MHz. The secondary (β) relaxation process was analyzed in the temperature range 183–233 K at water contents between 20 and 30 wt %. The relaxation times were obtained, and the activation energy of that process was calculated. In order to assess the effect of borate on the relaxation of disaccharide–water mixtures, we also studied the dielectric behavior of sucrose aqueous solutions in the same range of temperatures and water contents. Our findings support the view that, beyond a water content of approximately 20 wt %, the secondary relaxation of water–sucrose and water–sucrose–borate mixtures adopts a universal character that can be explained in terms of a simple exponential function of the temperature scaled by the glass transition temperature (Tg). The behavior observed for water–sucrose and water–sucrose–borate mixtures is compared with previous results obtained in other water–carbohydrate systems.