Application of the Compensated Arrhenius Formalism to Fluidity Data of Polar Organic Liquids

The temperature dependence of viscosity (the reciprocal of fluidity) in polar liquids has been studied for over a century, but the available theoretical models have serious limitations. Consequently, the viscosity is often described with empirical equations using adjustable fitting parameters that offer no insight into the molecular mechanism of transport. We have previously reported a novel approach called the compensated Arrhenius formalism (CAF) to describe ionic conductivity, self-diffusion, and dielectric relaxation in terms of molecular and system properties. Here the CAF is applied to fluidity data of pure <i>n</i>-acetates, 2-ketones, <i>n</i>-nitriles, and <i>n</i>-alcohols over the temperature range 5–85 °C. The fluidity is represented as an Arrhenius-like expression that includes a static dielectric constant dependence in the exponential prefactor. The dielectric constant dependence results from the dependence of mass and charge transport on the molecular dipole moment and the solvent dipole density. The CAF is the only self-consistent description of fluid transport in polar liquids written solely in terms of molecular and system parameters. A scaling procedure is used to calculate the activation energy for transport. We find that the activation energies for fluidity of the aprotic liquids are comparable in value, whereas a higher average <i>E</i>_a value is observed for the <i>n</i>-alcohol data. Finally, we contrast the molecular description of transport presented here with the conventional hydrodynamic model