Concentration dependence of ionic transport in dilute organic electrolyte solutions

Ion transport is studied in dilute organic liquid electrolyte solutions in which close cation-anion interactions are minimized either through steric hindrance imposed by the bulky tetrabutylammonium cation or by strong solvation of alkali metal cations by DMSO or 1-propanol. In these solutions, the molar conductivity does not appear to depend on either the solvent viscosity or the size of the solvated charge carrier in a manner consistent with Walden's rule. The molar conductivities plotted as a function of the solvent dielectric constant from epsilon = 5.48 to 63.5 appear to lie on a smooth curve for a set of 0.0055 M solutions of tetrabutylammonium trifluoromethanesulfonate in a variety of aprotic solvents. The molar conductivity smoothly increases with increasing dielectric constant to a maximum at roughly epsilon = 33 and then decreases with further increase of the dielectric constant. The conductivity appears to depend only on the dielectric constant and not the specific functional group in this broad family of solvents. A similar plot for a series of linear alcohols as solvents also led to a smooth curve, although the values of the molar conductivity were lower than values in the aprotic solvents by almost an order of magnitude at corresponding values of the solvent dielectric constant.