Effect of the polarity of solvents on periodic precipitation: Formation of hierarchical revert liesegang patterns

Date
2022-10-11
Advisor
Instructor
Source Title
The Journal of Physical Chemistry B
Print ISSN
Electronic ISSN
Publisher
American Chemical Society
Volume
126
Issue
41
Pages
8322 - 8330
Language
English
Type
Article
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Abstract

Liesegang pattern (LP) is one example of self-organized periodic precipitation patterns in nonequilibrium systems. Several studies have demonstrated that the LP morphology can track physicochemical environmental conditions (e.g., temperature); however, the polarity effect has not been explored to date. In this study, a copper chromate system is used to reveal the impact of solvent polarity on the evolving LP structure using water/organic solvent mixtures. In the typical case of using water/dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) mixtures, two drastic changes in LP morphology with increasing DMSO contents were found: (i) increasing frequency of the original structure and (ii) formation of a hierarchical pattern with the appearance of another, lower-frequency structure. Furthermore, the simulation model operating with a bimodal size distribution, allowing both homogeneous and heterogeneous precipitations showed good agreement with the experimental results. Therefore, this study demonstrated that LP can be tailored by solvent polarity and can be used for designing hierarchical precipitation patterns in a straightforward manner.

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Book Title
Keywords
Nanoparticles, Polarity, Precipitation, Self organization, Solvents
Citation
Published Version (Please cite this version)