Dielectric constant/effect/function

If this electrostatic treatment of the substituent effect of poles is sound, the effect of a pole upon the Gibbs function of activation at a particular position should be inversely proportional to the effective dielectric constant, and the longer the methylene chain the more closely should the effective dielectric constant approach the dielectric constant of the medium. Surprisingly, competitive nitrations of phenpropyl trimethyl ammonium perchlorate and benzene in acetic anhydride and tri-fluoroacetic acid showed the relative rate not to decrease markedly with the dielectric constant of the solvent. It was suggested that the expected decrease in reactivity of the cation was obscured by the faster nitration of ion pairs. 

Chemical and biological sensors (qv) are important appHcations of LB films. In field-effect devices, the tunneling current is a function of the dielectric constant of the organic film (85—90). For example, NO2, an electron acceptor, has been detected by a phthalocyanine (or a porphyrin) LB film. The mechanism of the reaction is a partial oxidation that introduces charge carriers into the film, thus changing its band gap and as a result, its dc-conductivity. Field-effect devices are very sensitive, but not selective. 

The results obtained demonstrate competition between the entropy favouring binding at bumps and the potential most likely to favour binding at dips of the surface. For a range of pairwise-additive, power-law interactions, it was found that the effect of the potential dominates, but in the (non-additive) limit of a surface of much higher dielectric constant than in solution the entropy effects win. Thus, the preferential binding of the polymer to the protuberances of a metallic surface was predicted [22]. Besides, this theory indirectly assumes the occupation of bumps by the weakly attracted neutral macromolecules capable of covalent interaction with surface functions. 

Many approaches have been used to correlate solvent effects. The approach used most often is based on the electrostatic theory, the theoretical development of which has been described in detail by Amis [114]. The reaction rate is correlated with some bulk parameter of the solvent, such as the dielectric constant or its various algebraic functions. The search for empirical parameters of solvent polarity and their applications in multiparameter equations has recently been intensified, and this approach is described in the book by Reich-ardt [115] and more recently in the chapter on medium effects in Connor s text on chemical kinetics [110]. 

Fig. 11. Effect of dielectric constant of dispersed particle on the ER effect in a polymer gel. The increment in shear storage modulus induced by an ac electric field of 0.4 kV/mm is plotted as a function of the real part of the dielectric constant of the particle...

It is, of course, usual in discussing the electrochemical interface to use a dielectric constant, which is the ratio of the electric displacement to the electric field. By Fourier transforming the dielectric function e(k), one would obtain an effective dielectric constant, which would, however, depend on position. In fact,48 the screening... 

With the addition of a pseudopotential interaction between electrons and metal ions, the density-functional approach has been used82 to calculate the effect of the solvent of the electrolyte phase on the potential difference across the surface of a liquid metal. The solvent is modeled as a repulsive barrier or as a region of dielectric constant greater than unity or both. Assuming no specific adsorption, the metal is supposed to be in contact with a monolayer of water, modeled as a region of 3-A thickness (diameter of a water molecule) in which the dielectric constant is 6 (high-frequency value, appropriate for nonorientable dipoles). Beyond this monolayer, the dielectric constant is assumed to take on the bulk liquid value of 78, although the calculations showed that the dielectric constant outside of the monolayer had only a small effect on the electronic profile. 

The least problematic issues are UV spectral changes as a function of different solvents between the reference and the test sample. Solvent effects on UV spectra in solvents of decreased dielectric constant compared with water parallel solvent effects on apparent pKa. The changes are most marked for acids, for example, leading to a numerical increase of up to two pKa units - an apparent decrease in the acidity of the carboxylic acid. Effects on bases are considerably less. The apparent pKa of a base in a reduced dielectric constant solvent might be up to about half a pKa unit numerically lower (less basic). The UV spectra of neutral compounds... 

With traditional solvents, the solvent power of a fluid phase is often related to its polarity. Compressed C02 has a fairly low dielectric constant under all conditions (e = 1.2-1.6), but this measure has increasingly been shown to be insufficiently accurate to define solvent effects in many cases [13], Based on this value however, there is a widespread (yet incorrect ) belief that scC02 behaves just like hexane . The Hildebrand solubility parameter (5) of C02 has been determined as a function of pressure, as demonstrated in Figure 8.3. It has been found that the solvent properties of a supercritical fluid depend most importantly on its bulk density, which depends in turn on the pressure and temperature. In general higher density of the SCF corresponds to stronger solvation power, whereas lower density results in a weaker solvent. 

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