Four-time 7Li stimulated-echo spectroscopy for the study of dynamic heterogeneities: Application to lithium borate glass

To study the nature of the nonexponential ionic hopping in solids a pulse sequence was developed that yields four-time stimulated-echo functions of previously inaccessible spin-3/2-nuclei such as Li-7. It exploits combined Zeeman and octupolar order as longitudinal carrier state. Higher-order correlation functions were successfully generated for natural-abundance and isotopically-enriched lithium diborate glasses. Four-time Li-7 measurements are presented and compared with two-time correlation functions. The results are discussed with reference to approaches devised to quantify the degree of nonexponentiality in glass forming systems and evidence for the occurrence of dynamic heterogeneities and dynamic exchange were found. Additional experiments using the Li-6 species illustrate the challenge posed by subensemble selection when the dipolar interactions are not very much smaller than the quadrupolar ones. (C) 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.