Abstract
The dependence of the colour of iodine solutions upon the nature of the solvent is generally believed to be due to the presence of loosely bound iodine-solvent complexes, or ‘solvates’, in the brown solutions (for example, in ethanol) and of ‘unsolvated’ diatomic iodine molecules in the violet solutions (for example, in carbon tetrachloride)1. The nature, however, of this ‘solvation’ remains obscure. It is obviously not a simple electrostatic solvation, for it has little to do with the dielectric constant of the solvent; nor would such a solvation serve to account for the marked difference in chemical properties between the violet and brown solutions.
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References
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Gillam and Morton, Proc. Roy. Soc., A, 132, 152 (1931).
Gillam, Trans. Farad. Soc., 29, 1132 (1933).
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FAIRBROTHER, F. Colour of Iodine Solutions. Nature 160, 87 (1947). https://doi.org/10.1038/160087a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/160087a0
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