Analysis of multi-wavelength measurements of diffusive properties via dispersion dependence of optical properties

We suggest a novel approach to analyze the diffusive properties of mixtures using their optical dispersion relations. Two diagnostics are required to determine the thermodiffusion coefficients in a ternary mixture, e.g., two different wavelengths. The literature results on thermodiffusion experiments indicate that the choice of a pair of wavelengths affects the result of the sought-after thermodiffusion (Soret) coefficients somewhat, because the numerical values of the refractive index variation with the concentration (optical contrast factor ∂n/∂C) depend on the wavelength. The present study offers three main contributions. First, we show that the available measurements for the optical contrast factors and component separation caused by the Soret effect for the mixture tetralin-isobutylbenzene-n-dodecane can be described by the same type of Cauchy dispersion relation as the refractive index n=f(λ). Then, we discuss an algorithm for eliminating the two types of systematic errors from the reported measurements of contrast factors in order to elaborate new synthetic dispersion curves of the Cauchy type. Lastly, we create a general dispersion curve for the stationary component separation which merges the results obtained at different pairs of wavelengths and provides consistent Soret coefficients.