On the validity of some equilibrium models for thermodiffusion

Abstract

When applied to binary solutions, thermal gradients lead to the generation of concentration-gradients and thus to inhomogeneous systems. While being known for more than 150 years, the molecular origins for this phenomenon are still debated, and there is no consensus on the underlying physical models or theories that could explain the amplitude of the concentration gradient in response to a given temperature gradients. Notably, there have been some attempts to relate this non-equilibrium, steady-state manifestation, to equilibrium properties of these solutions, for example, to the temperature dependence of the self-diffusion coefficient or to the solvation free-energies of each of their components. Here, we use molecular dynamics simulations on dilute solutions containing molecular size solutes, both in a thermophoretic setting as well as under equilibrium conditions, to test the validity of such models. We show that these approaches are inadequate and lead to completely uncorrelated estimates as compared to those based on the out-of-equilibrium measurements. Crucially, they fail to explain the strong mass-dependence (to which thermodynamics or single particle diffusion are insensitive) observed in the simulations and measured in the experiments. However, our results suggest an interesting correlation between the amplitude of the short-time molecular motion and that of the concentration-gradient that would deserve future investigations.