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Published on: May 27, 2018
Isotopic Fingerprints of Proton-Mediated Dielectric Relaxation in Solid and Liquid Water
Alexander Ryzhov1, Pavel Kapralov2, Mikhail Stolov2
1Austrian Institute of Technology, 1210 Vienna, Austria.
Abstract:
We report cross-validated measurements of the isotope effect on dielectric relaxation for four isotopologues of ice and water, including the 1-10^{5} Hz region, in which only sporadic and inconsistent measurements were previously available. In ice, the relaxation rates exhibit an activated temperature dependence with an isotope-independent activation energy. Across 248-273 K, the H_{2}O-to-D_{2}O relaxation rate ratio remains constant at 2.0±0.1. This scaling agrees with Kramers' theory in the high-friction limit if the moving mass is the proton or deuteron, indicating that dielectric relaxation is governed by a classic proton transfer over an energy barrier rather than molecular reorientation.
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