Structural studies of liquid alcohols by neutron diffraction

Abstract

Neutron diffraction measurements have been made on deuterated methyl alcohol at 20°C using incident wavelengths of 0·7 and 0·5 Å. The cross-section data at large Q-values have been analysed with a molecular form factor to determine the geometrical parameters defining the conformation of the molecules. The results are in good agreement with other measurements on the vapour phase with the exception of the OD distance which is increased. This effect may be explained by the influence of hydrogen bonding between neighbouring molecules and is similar to the behaviour in water. The intermolecular contribution has also been obtained and transformed to give a composite pair correlation function for each dataset. The oscillatory structure extends to 12 Å and provides suitable information for comparison with computer simulation.