Why choice of solvent matters more than you think
Weak interactions with solvents could change the chemical identity of a solution
Imagine a jellybean in a jar of marbles. If we shake the jar, marbles jostle the jellybean, dictating its trajectory and potentially distorting its shape as it gets battered and squished. Often, condensed phase systems are thought of in similar terms: solute ‘jellybeans’ held in a sea of solvent ‘marbles’. Yet the choice of our marbles matters. A solvent forms a cage around the solute, compressing its electron density. For dimer molecules, this results in a shortening of the average bond length and an increase in the vibrational frequency.