Rejuvenation Versus Overaging: The Effect of Cyclic Loading/Unloading on the Segmental Dynamics of Poly(methyl methacrylate) Glasses

The acceleration of structural relaxation or physical aging by deformation, known as overaging, has been reported in experiments and simulations of polymer and colloid glasses, and correct accounting for overaging is important for the prediction of the long-term behavior of polymer glasses in engineering applications. Here, the effects of cyclic loading/unloading on the segmental dynamics and mechanical properties of poly­(methyl methacrylate) glasses are investigated using a probe reorientation technique and time-aging time superposition of the mechanical response, respectively. Sets of 5000 tensile loading/unloading cycles were performed at temperatures between T_g10 K and T_g25 K with cycle extension strains ranging from 0.003 to 0.007. After cycling, the segmental dynamics measured with the probe reorientation technique either remained unchanged or were faster relative to an undeformed sample. The relaxation times of cycled glasses recovered with a common time scale on the order of their aging time, indicating that they retain a memory of their original age, as opposed to a full erasure of their thermal and mechanical history. Surprisingly, changes as a result of cycling were more obvious in probe reorientation measurements than in the mechanical properties, suggesting that the probe reorientation technique can sensitively detect nonlinear effects of deformation. No evidence of overaging was observed in the optical or mechanical measurements as a result of these cyclic loading/unloading experiments.