Macroscopic conductivity of aqueous electrolyte solutions scales with ultrafast microscopic ion motions.
basic_science · Level V
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- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 32235854.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-020-15450-2 and PMC identifier 7109088.
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Abstract
Despite the widespread use of aqueous electrolytes as conductors, the molecular mechanism of ionic conductivity at moderate to high electrolyte concentrations remains largely unresolved. Using a combination of dielectric spectroscopy and molecular dynamics simulations, we show that the absorption of electrolytes at ~0.3 THz sensitively reports on the local environment of ions. The magnitude of these high-frequency ionic motions scales linearly with conductivity for a wide range of ions and concentrations. This scaling is rationalized within a harmonic oscillator model based on the potential of mean force extracted from simulations. Our results thus suggest that long-ranged ionic transport is intimately related to the local energy landscape and to the friction for short-ranged ion dynamics: a high macroscopic electrolyte conductivity is thereby shown to be related to large-amplitude motions at a molecular scale.