The Anisotropy of the Molecular Reorientational Motions in Liquid Methanol

Abstract

Abstract Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) relaxation time measurements on isotopically substituted samples yield a detailed understanding of the molecular reorientational dynamics in liquids. Reorientational correlation times obtained from such experiments are reported for two molecule-fixed vectors in pure liquid methanol. While the reorientational motions of single molecules are nearly isotropic at temperatures below 250 K, at 308 K the reorientational correlation time of the O-H vector becomes 2.3 times larger than that of the O-C vector. Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations give access to the complete correlation functions of the reorientational motions. Correlation times extracted from these functions fit well to the experiment in case of the O-C vector. At low temperatures, however, these times lie markedly above those obtained in the experiment for the O-H vector. Thus, the simulation yields reorientation times for the O-H vector that are, independent of the temperature, twice as large as those of the O-C vector.