RELAXATION PHENOMENON

in physics and chemistry, an effect related to the delay between the application of an external stress to a system and its response. It may occur in nuclear, atomic, and molecular systems. Chemists and physicists use relaxation effects to study processes that take only a fraction of a second. When an equilibrated nuclear, atomic, or molecular system is subjected to an abrupt physical change such as a sudden rise in temperature or pressure, it takes time for the system to re-equilibrate under the new conditions. This period, known as the relaxation time, can provide insights into atomic and molecular structures and into the rates and mechanisms of chemical reactions. Relaxation phenomena are caused by redistribution of energy among the nuclear, electronic, vibrational, and rotational energy states of the atoms and molecules that constitute the system. In addition, the relaxation may involve a shift in the ratio of concentrations of reactants and products. A typical reaction that may be studied by measuring relaxation effects is that in which one molecule of the gas dinitrogen tetroxide breaks intoor is formed fromtwo molecules of the gas nitrogen dioxide, as represented by the equation N2O42NO2. At standard pressure and temperature, a system composed of these two gases will contain approximately 80 percent (by mass) dinitrogen tetroxide. But when the system is disturbed by a sudden change in temperature or pressure, the gases eventually reach new equilibrium concentrations to suit the new conditions. By determining the relaxation time, it is possible to derive the rate at which nitrogen dioxide combines to form dinitrogen tetroxide, and also the rate of the reverse reaction. An important technique used in relaxation studies is the temperature-jump method. The equilibrium of a system is disrupted by suddenly changing the temperature and observing the concentrations of the reactants as a function of time. One way of raising the temperature is to discharge an electric current through a sample; another method is to apply ultrasonic radiation to the system. Relaxation phenomena also have important implications in nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectrometry, an analytical technique used by chemists to identify and probe the molecular structure of substances. When examined by this technique, a sample is placed in a powerful magnetic field. Certain nuclei in the test material behave as tiny bar magnets and line up with the field. But when more energy is added to the system, in the form of radio waves, for example, the nuclei flip into a different, higher energy orientation. This phenomenon is useful to the chemist because nuclei in different structural arrangements within a molecule accept different and discrete frequencies of radio waves in order to flip, and so by applying a whole range of radio wave frequencies to the sample it is possible to correlate the absorbed frequencies with the structural features of the material under test. The sensitivity of the technique is dictated by the time and route taken for excited nuclei to dissipate their excess energy and revert to low-energy orientations, lined up with the applied magnetic field. The results of an NMR scan are charted as a radio wave spectrum showing which frequencies were absorbed or emitted, and hence which structural groups and atoms are present in the sample. Similar effects govern the performance of electron spin resonance (ESR), another analytical technique widely used by chemists.