ROTATIONAL-ISOMERISM OF MOLECULES IN CONDENSED PHASES

A statistical mechanical model is developed for the description of the conformational distribution of organic molecules in the liquid and solid phases. In the model, they are assumed to have one internal freedom of rotation. The molecules are fixed to lattice sites and have two types of ordering, conformational and distributional. The latter is supposed to represent an ordering typical of solid state. The model is compared with the experimental results of the rotational-isomeric ratio of 1,2-dichloro-1,1-diffuoroethane, in the temperature range from 77 to 300 K. It explains successfully the experimental results, especially the behavior near the melting point. From the point of view of melting, the present model is an extension of the Lennard-Jones and Devonshire model, because, when the distinctions between the two conformers are neglected, the parameter representing the distributional ordering of the molecules results in the same equation as that derived from the Lennard-Jones and Devonshire model.