Basic Characteristics of the Chemical Potential

Before we attempt to quantify this new concept we will create an overview of what it means, what it is good for, and how it can be dealt with. In order to do this, we compile the most important characteristics of the chemical potential into a short outline, a kind of wanted poster, which we will subsequently go into more deeply. 

We can assume that any substance, let us call it B, has a more or less pronotmced tendency to transform. This means a tendency to decompose into its elementary (or other) components, to rearrange itself into some isomer, B B, or to react with other substances B, B . 

Even less drastic transformations of substance B, such as changing the state of aggregation, the crystalline structure, the degree of association, etc., which can be symbolized for example as follows  

The chemical potential is a measure of the strength of this tendency. We write or //(B) to signify the potential of substance B. The greater the p, the more active or bustling the substance. The smaller the p, the more passive or phlegmatic it is. 

As was mentioned earlier, the strength of the inherent tendency to transform, and with it the numerical value of p, fundamentally depends upon the nature of the substance. In this context, we see the nature of a substance being determined by its chemical composition, characterized by its content formula, but also by its state of aggregation, its crystalline stmcture, etc. Hence, liquid water and water vapor as well as diamond and graphite will exhibit different chemical potentials under otherwise identical conditions and therefore need to be treated as different substances. In addition, the strength of the tendency to transform also depends upon the milieu in which the substance is located. By milieu we mean the totality of parameters such as temperature T, pressure p, concentration c, the type of solvent S, type and proportions of constituents of a mixmre, etc., which are necessary to clearly characterize the environment of B. In order to express these relations, we may write 

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