Supramolecular x-ray signature of susceptibility amplification in hydrogen-bonded liquids

Mixing two nonconducting hydrogen-bonded liquids, each exhibiting a low dielectric relaxation strength, can result in a highly electrically absorbing fluid. This susceptibility amplification effect is demonstrated for mixtures of monohydroxy alcohols. Whereas in the pure liquids a tendency to form ringlike low-dipole moment clusters prevails, in the mixtures such supramolecular structures are disfavored leading to an up to tenfold enhancement of the dielectric loss. The compositional evolution of density and mean cluster-cluster separation is traced using x-ray scattering and indicates deviations from ideal mixing with decreased C-C but simultaneously increased O-O correlation lengths. Thus, the variation in the supramolecular absorption strength could be tracked using a static scattering technique. These observations are in harmony with volume exclusion and ring open effects that predict an optimized susceptibility amplification for mixtures in which the two components occupy equal volume fractions as experimentally observed.