The role of electrostriction in high pressure chemistry (Modern aspects of physical chemistry at high pressure : the 50th commemorative volume)

Abstract

This article gives a partly historical review of the role that is played in high-pressure chemistry by electrostriction (the contraction of solvent that occurs around dissolved ions and charged groups). It has emerged that the high-pressure behaviour of many ionic reactions in solution is governed primarily by the changes of electrostriction that accompany the reactions, and that the pressure effects can by predicted, at least qualitatively and to some extent quantitatively, by the simple continuum electrostatic theory of Drude and Nernst and of Born. More detailed molecular models are now being developed by the methods of computer simulation and these should ultimately be capable of predicting chemical behaviour over a very wide range of pressures and temperatures.