Dynamics of liquid acetonitrile at high frequencies

Abstract

Quasielastic neutron scattering spectra were measured for pure acetonitrile at 25 °C. In the framework of a simple model of translation and rotation, it was found that the short-time self-diffusion coefficient of liquid acetonitrile is similar to the long-time one measured by NMR. As far as the rotational motion is concerned, the characteristic time was found to be close to the typical value of the molecule spinning motion. The complete inelastic and quasielastic spectra may be further used to check the results of molecular dynamics simulations of acetonitrile.