Evidence for short-range orientation effects in dipolar aprotic liquids from vibrational spectroscopy. Part 1.—Ethylene and propylene carbonates

Abstract

The CO stretching frequency of liquid ethylene and propylene carbonates is higher in the infrared than in the Raman spectrum. The difference amounts to 13 cm–1 for ethylene carbonate at 313 K. This effect is explained as the consequence of a coupling between the transition dipoles of neighbouring molecules, which is made possible by some degree of alignment of molecular dipoles due to the high dipole moment of these molecules (about 16 × 10–30 C m). A study of dilution and temperature effects confirms this interpretation.