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Miscibility () is the property of two substances to mix in all proportions (that is, to fully dissolve in each other at any
concentration In chemistry, concentration is the abundance of a constituent divided by the total volume of a mixture. Several types of mathematical description can be distinguished: '' mass concentration'', ''molar concentration'', '' number concentration'', ...
), forming a homogeneous mixture (a solution). The term is most often applied to liquids but also applies to
solid Solid is one of the four fundamental states of matter (the others being liquid, gas, and plasma). The molecules in a solid are closely packed together and contain the least amount of kinetic energy. A solid is characterized by structural ...
s and
gas Gas is one of the four fundamental states of matter (the others being solid, liquid, and plasma). A pure gas may be made up of individual atoms (e.g. a noble gas like neon), elemental molecules made from one type of atom (e.g. oxygen), or ...
es. For example,
water Water (chemical formula ) is an Inorganic compound, inorganic, transparent, tasteless, odorless, and Color of water, nearly colorless chemical substance, which is the main constituent of Earth's hydrosphere and the fluids of all known living ...
and
ethanol Ethanol (abbr. EtOH; also called ethyl alcohol, grain alcohol, drinking alcohol, or simply alcohol) is an organic compound. It is an alcohol with the chemical formula . Its formula can be also written as or (an ethyl group linked to a ...
are miscible because they mix in all proportions. By contrast, substances are said to be immiscible if there are certain proportions in which the mixture does not form a solution. For one example,
oil An oil is any nonpolar chemical substance that is composed primarily of hydrocarbons and is hydrophobic (does not mix with water) & lipophilic (mixes with other oils). Oils are usually flammable and surface active. Most oils are unsaturated ...
is not soluble in water, so these two solvents are immiscible. As another example,
butanone Butanone, also known as methyl ethyl ketone (MEK), is an organic compound with the formula CH3C(O)CH2CH3. This colourless liquid ketone has a sharp, sweet odor reminiscent of acetone. It is produced industrially on a large scale, but occurs in ...
(methyl ethyl ketone) is significantly soluble in water, but these two solvents are also immiscible because in some proportions the mixture will separate into two phases.


Organic compounds

In
organic compound In chemistry, organic compounds are generally any chemical compounds that contain carbon-hydrogen or carbon-carbon bonds. Due to carbon's ability to catenate (form chains with other carbon atoms), millions of organic compounds are known. T ...
s, the weight percent of
hydrocarbon In organic chemistry, a hydrocarbon is an organic compound consisting entirely of hydrogen and carbon. Hydrocarbons are examples of group 14 hydrides. Hydrocarbons are generally colourless and hydrophobic, and their odors are usually weak or ...
chain often determines the compound's miscibility with water. For example, among the alcohols,
ethanol Ethanol (abbr. EtOH; also called ethyl alcohol, grain alcohol, drinking alcohol, or simply alcohol) is an organic compound. It is an alcohol with the chemical formula . Its formula can be also written as or (an ethyl group linked to a ...
has two
carbon Carbon () is a chemical element with the symbol C and atomic number 6. It is nonmetallic and tetravalent—its atom making four electrons available to form covalent chemical bonds. It belongs to group 14 of the periodic table. Carbon mak ...
atom Every atom is composed of a nucleus and one or more electrons bound to the nucleus. The nucleus is made of one or more protons and a number of neutrons. Only the most common variety of hydrogen has no neutrons. Every solid, liquid, gas, ...
s and is miscible with water, whereas
1-butanol 1-Butanol, also known as butan-1-ol or ''n''-butanol, is a primary alcohol with the chemical formula C4H9OH and a linear structure. Isomers of 1-butanol are isobutanol, butan-2-ol and ''tert''-butanol. The unmodified term butanol usually refers ...
with four carbons is not.
1-Octanol 1-Octanol, also known as octan-1-ol, is the organic compound with the molecular formula CH3(CH2)7OH. It is a fatty alcohol. Many other isomers are also known generically as octanols. 1-Octanol is manufactured for the synthesis of esters for us ...
, with eight carbons, is practically insoluble in water, and its immiscibility leads it to be used as a standard for partition equilibria. The straight-chain carboxylic acids up to butanoic acid (with four carbon atoms) are miscible with water,
pentanoic acid Valeric acid or pentanoic acid is a straight-chain alkyl carboxylic acid with the chemical formula . Like other low-molecular-weight carboxylic acids, it has an unpleasant odor. It is found in the perennial flowering plant ''Valeriana officin ...
(with five carbons) is partly soluble, and hexanoic acid (with six) is practically insoluble, as are longer
fatty acid In chemistry, particularly in biochemistry, a fatty acid is a carboxylic acid with an aliphatic chain, which is either saturated or unsaturated. Most naturally occurring fatty acids have an unbranched chain of an even number of carbon atoms, ...
s and other
lipid Lipids are a broad group of naturally-occurring molecules which includes fats, waxes, sterols, fat-soluble vitamins (such as vitamins A, D, E and K), monoglycerides, diglycerides, phospholipids, and others. The functions of lipids includ ...
s; the very long carbon chains of lipids cause them almost always to be immiscible with water. Analogous situations occur for other
functional group In organic chemistry, a functional group is a substituent or moiety in a molecule that causes the molecule's characteristic chemical reactions. The same functional group will undergo the same or similar chemical reactions regardless of the re ...
s such as
aldehyde In organic chemistry, an aldehyde () is an organic compound containing a functional group with the structure . The functional group itself (without the "R" side chain) can be referred to as an aldehyde but can also be classified as a formyl grou ...
s and ketones.


Metals

Immiscible
metal A metal (from Greek μέταλλον ''métallon'', "mine, quarry, metal") is a material that, when freshly prepared, polished, or fractured, shows a lustrous appearance, and conducts electricity and heat relatively well. Metals are typicall ...
s are unable to form
alloy An alloy is a mixture of chemical elements of which at least one is a metal. Unlike chemical compounds with metallic bases, an alloy will retain all the properties of a metal in the resulting material, such as electrical conductivity, ductilit ...
s with each other. Typically, a mixture will be possible in the molten state, but upon freezing, the metals separate into layers. This property allows solid precipitates to be formed by rapidly freezing a molten mixture of immiscible metals. One example of immiscibility in metals is
copper Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu (from la, cuprum) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pinkis ...
and
cobalt Cobalt is a chemical element with the symbol Co and atomic number 27. As with nickel, cobalt is found in the Earth's crust only in a chemically combined form, save for small deposits found in alloys of natural meteoric iron. The free element, p ...
, where rapid freezing to form solid precipitates has been used to create granular GMR materials. There also exist metals that are immiscible in the liquid state. One with industrial importance is that liquid
zinc Zinc is a chemical element with the symbol Zn and atomic number 30. Zinc is a slightly brittle metal at room temperature and has a shiny-greyish appearance when oxidation is removed. It is the first element in group 12 (IIB) of the periodi ...
and liquid
silver Silver is a chemical element with the symbol Ag (from the Latin ', derived from the Proto-Indo-European ''h₂erǵ'': "shiny" or "white") and atomic number 47. A soft, white, lustrous transition metal, it exhibits the highest electrical ...
are immiscible in liquid
lead Lead is a chemical element with the symbol Pb (from the Latin ) and atomic number 82. It is a heavy metal that is denser than most common materials. Lead is soft and malleable, and also has a relatively low melting point. When freshly cu ...
, while silver is miscible in zinc. This leads to the
Parkes process The Parkes process is a pyrometallurgical industrial process for removing silver from lead during the production of bullion. It is an example of liquid–liquid extraction. The process takes advantage of two liquid-state properties of zinc. The fi ...
, an example of liquid-liquid extraction, whereby lead containing any amount of silver is melted with zinc. The silver migrates to the zinc, which is skimmed off the top of the two-phase liquid, and the zinc is then boiled away, leaving nearly pure silver.


Effect of entropy

If a mixture of
polymer A polymer (; Greek '' poly-'', "many" + ''-mer'', "part") is a substance or material consisting of very large molecules called macromolecules, composed of many repeating subunits. Due to their broad spectrum of properties, both synthetic a ...
s has lower configurational entropy than the components, they are likely to be immiscible in one another even in the liquid state.


Determination

Miscibility of two materials is often determined optically. When the two miscible liquids are combined, the resulting liquid is clear. If the mixture is cloudy the two materials are immiscible. Care must be taken with this determination. If the indices of refraction of the two materials are similar, an immiscible mixture may be clear and give an incorrect determination that the two liquids are miscible.


See also

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Miscibility gap A miscibility gap is a region in a phase diagram for a mixture of components where the mixture exists as two or more phases – any region of composition of mixtures where the constituents are not completely miscible. The IUPAC Gold Book defines ...
*
Emulsion An emulsion is a mixture of two or more liquids that are normally immiscible (unmixable or unblendable) owing to liquid-liquid phase separation. Emulsions are part of a more general class of two-phase systems of matter called colloids. Altho ...
*
Heteroazeotrope A heteroazeotrope is an azeotrope where the vapour phase coexists with two liquid phases. Sketch of a T-x/y equilibrium curve of a typical heteroazeotropic mixture Examples of heteroazeotropes *Benzene - Water NBP 69.2 °C *Dichloromethane - Wa ...
*
ITIES In electrochemistry, ITIES (interface between two immiscible electrolyte solutions) is an electrochemical interface that is either polarisable or polarised. An ITIES is polarisable if one can change the Galvani potential difference, or in other wor ...
*
Multiphasic liquid A multiphasic liquid is a mixture consisting of more than two immiscible liquid phases. Biphasic mixtures consisting of two immiscible phases are very common and usually consist of an organic solvent and an aqueous phase ("oil and water"). Multip ...


References

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