Onsager's model of the dielectric constant is used to provide a molecular-level picture of how the dielectric constant affects mass and charge transport in organic liquids and organic liquid electrolytes. Specifically, the molecular and system parameters governing transport are the molecular dipole moment μ and the solvent dipole density N. The compensated Arrhenius formalism (CAF) writes the temperature-dependent ionic conductivity or diffusion coefficient as an Arrhenius-like expression that also includes a static dielectric constant (ε(s)) dependence in the exponential prefactor. The temperature dependence of ε(s) and therefore the temperature dependence of the exponential prefactor is due to the quantity N/T, where T is the temperature. Using the procedure described in the CAF, values of the activation energy can be obtained by scaling out the N/T dependence instead of the ε(s) dependence. It has been previously shown that a plot of the prefactors versus ε(s) results in a master curve, and here it is shown that a master curve also results by plotting the prefactors against N/T. Therefore, the CAF can be applied by using temperature-dependent density data instead of temperature-dependent dielectric constant data. This application is demonstrated for diffusion data of n-nitriles, n-thiols, n-acetates, and 2-ketones, as well as conductivity data for dilute tetrabutylammonium triflate-nitrile electrolytes.

Conductivities and static dielectric constants for 0.0055 M tetrabutylammonium trifluoromethanesulfonate in n-butyl acetate, n-pentyl acetate, n-hexyl acetate, n-octyl acetate, and n-decyl acetate have been collected over the temperature range of 0-80 °C. Self-diffusion coefficients and static dielectric constants of pure acetates were obtained over the same temperature range. Both temperature-dependent diffusion coefficients and ionic conductivities of these pure acetates and dilute acetate solutions can be accurately described by the compensated Arrhenius formalism. Activation energies were calculated from compensated Arrhenius plots for both conductivity and diffusion data. Activation energies are higher for conductivity data of 0.0055 M TbaTf-acetates compared to diffusion data of pure acetates. The plot of the exponential prefactor versus the dielectric constant yields a single master curve for both conductivity and diffusion data. These data support the argument that mass and charge transport are thermally activated processes in the acetates, as previously observed in alcohol-based electrolytes.

The NH(2)(+) stretching modes of secondary amine salts have been previously studied, but the band assignments are inconsistent between the various studies. This paper assigns characteristic NH(2)(+) group frequencies between approximately 2500 and 2400 cm(-1). Crystal structures of four diamine salts are reported here. Vibrational frequencies were calculated with the B3LYP hybrid Hartree-Fock/density functional method and the 6-31G(d) split-valence plus polarization basis set, and the results are in agreement with the experimental frequencies. Deuterium dilution experiments result in a group of sharply featured bands between the NH(2)(+) and the ND(2)(+) stretching bands. These bands, located between 2200 and 2100 cm(-1), are attributed to modes that contain contributions from coupled N-H and N-D stretching motions.

Self-diffusion coefficient measurements were performed for pure n-alkyl ketone liquids using the pulsed field gradient NMR spin-echo technique. Ionic conductivities and dielectric constants of 0.0055 mol·L−1 tetrabutylammonium trifluoromethanesulfonate in 2-pentanone, 2-hexanone, 2-heptanone, 2-octanone, 2-nonanone, and 2-decanone were also measured. The temperature-dependent conductivities and diffusion coefficients over the range 5–80 °C can be described using the compensated Arrhenius formalism. Compensated Arrhenius equation plots were used to calculate the average activation energy for both sets of data. The average activation energy from conductivity data is approximately equal to that from diffusion data. The data for the pure ketones and ketone-based electrolytes are compared with analogous data for pure n-alkyl acetates and n-alkyl acetate-based electrolytes.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s10953-013-9983-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Temperature-dependent ionic conductivities and cation/anion self-diffusion coefficients are measured for four electrolyte families: TbaTf-linear primary alcohols, LiTf-linear primary alcohols, TbaTf-n-alkyl acetates, and LiTf-n-alkyl acetates. The Nernst-Einstein equation does not adequately describe the data. Instead, the compensated Arrhenius formalism is applied to both conductivity and diffusion data. General trends based on temperature and alkyl chain length are observed when conductivity is plotted against cation or anion diffusion coefficient, but there is no clear pattern to the data. However, plotting conductivity exponential prefactors against those for diffusion results in four distinct curves, one each for the alcohol and acetate families described above. Furthermore, the TbaTf-alcohol and TbaTf-acetate data are "in line" with each other. The conductivity prefactors for the LiTf-alcohol data are smaller than those for the TbaTf data. The LiTf-acetate data have the lowest conductivity prefactors. This trend in prefactors mirrors the observed trend in degree of ionic association for these electrolytes.