Paper detail

The structure of fluids with impurities

The influence of dilute impurities on the structure of a fluid solvent is investigated theoretically. General arguments, which do not rely on particular models, are used to derive an extension of the Ornstein-Zernike form for the solvent structure factor at small scattering vectors. It is shown that dilute impurities can influence the solvent structure only if they are composed of ions with significantly different sizes. Non-ionic impurities or ions of similar size are shown to not alter the solvent structure qualitatively. This picture is compatible with available experimental data. The derived form of the solvent structure factor is expected to be useful to infer information on the impurity-solvent interactions form measured scattering intensities.