Liquid water dielectric relaxation mechanisms

Paddison et al. performed high frequency (4 dielectric relaxation studies, in the Gig ertz range, of hydrated Nafion 117 for the purpose of understanding fundamental mechanisms, for example, water molecule rotation and other possible processes that are involved in charge transport. Pure, bulk, liquid water is known to exhibit a distinct dielectric relaxation in the range 10—100 GHz in the form of an e" versus /peak and a sharp drop in the real part of the dielectric permittivity at high / A network analyzer was used for data acquisition, and measurements were taken in reflection mode. 

Thus, specific interactions directly determine the spectroscopic features due to hydrogen bonding of the water molecules, while unspecific interactions arise in all or many polar liquids and are not directly related to the H-bonds. Now it became clear that the basis of four different processes (terms) used in Ref. [17] and mentioned above could rationally be explained on a molecular basis. One may say that specific interactions are more or less cooperative in their nature. They reveal some features of a solid state, while unspecific interactions could be understood in terms of a liquid state of matter, if we consider chaotic gas-like motions of a single polar molecule, namely, rotational motions of a dipole in a dense surroundings of other molecules. The modem aspect of the spectroscopic studies leads us to a conclusion that both gas-like and solid-state-like effects are the characteristic features of water. In this section we will first distinguish between the following two mechanisms of dielectric relaxation ... 

Figure 41. The scheme pertaining to the composite hat-curved—harmonic oscillator model the contributions of various mechanisms of dielectric relaxation to broadband spectra arising in liquid water. Frequency v is given in cm-1.

In addition to the more usual application to solids, dielectric relaxation or dispersion measurements are also used on solutions (and pure liquids). Cook (425) related the relaxation mechanism in water-dioxane mixtures to the rupture of H bonds. Hasted and co-workers (890) found that water-dioxane mixtures had longer relaxation times as the dioxane proportion increased or the temperature was lowered. Both trends are explained by formation of a H bonded complex. Yasumi (2219) found similar effects when large amounts of hexane... 

Physical Mechanisms. The simplest interpretation of these results is that the transport coefficients, other than the thermal conductivity, of the water are decreased by the hydration interaction. The changes in these transport properties are correlated the microemulsion with compositional phase volume 0.4 (i.e. 60% water) exhibits a mean dielectric relaxation frequency one-half that of the pure liquid water, and ionic conductivity and water selfdiffusion coefficient one half that of the bulk liquid. In bulk solutions, the dielectric relaxation frequency, ionic conductivity, and self-diffusion coefficient are all inversely proportional to the viscosity there is no such relation for the thermal conductivity. The transport properties of the microemulsions thus vary as expected from simple changes in "viscosity" of the aqueous phase. (This is quite different from the bulk viscosity of the microemulsion.)... 

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