Is the Kohlrausch function a good tool to account for nonexponentiality in Thermally Stimulated Depolarisation Currents (TSDC) data treatment?

The data treatment in Thermally Stimulated Depolarisation Currents (TSDC) is generally based on the Debye decay function. Due to the nonexponentiality of the main relaxation in molecular glasses and amorphous polymers, this usual methodology has been criticized and the alternative use of the Kohlrausch function (stretched exponential) was suggested. In the present work it is shown that the original form of the Kohlrausch function is not adequate to the analysis of TSDC data. An alternative methodology is proposed. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.