Deviations from ideal sublimation vapor pressure behavior in mixtures of polycyclic aromatic compounds with interacting heteroatoms

Abstract

Despite the relatively small atomic fraction of a given heteroatom in a binary mixture of polycyclic aromatic compounds (PAC), the presence of heteroatoms can significantly impact mixture vapor pressure behavior over a wide range of temperatures. The vapor pressures of several binary PAC mixtures containing various heteroatoms show a range of behavior, from practically ideal behavior following Raoult’s law to significant deviations from ideality depending on the heteroatoms present. Mixtures were synthesized using the quench-cool technique with equimolar amounts of two PAC, both containing heteroatoms such as aldehyde, carboxyl, nitrogen, and sulfur substituent groups. For some mixtures, deviation from ideality is inversely related to temperature, though in other cases we see deviation from ideality increasing with temperature, whereas some appear independent of temperature. Most commonly we see lower vapor pressures than predicted by Raoult’s Law, which indicates that the interacting heteroatoms prefer the solid mixture phase as opposed to the vapor phase. Although negative deviations predominate from Raoult’s Law, the varying mixtures investigated show both higher and lower enthalpies and entropies of sublimation than predicted. In each mixture, a higher enthalpy of sublimation leads to higher entropy of sublimation than predicted, and vice versa.