Strong acids often have rich structural phase diagrams with varying concentration and temperature related to the interplay between water and dissociated acid species. For sulfuric acid, the resulting disruption of water’s hydrogen bonding network gives rise to suppressed freezing points and rheological changes that bears resemblance to water-in-salt scenarios found in super-concentrated electrolytes. Despite the importance of sulfuric acid in many industrial processes and lead acid batteries, there is less agreement on the solution structures with multiple species playing important roles. Here, we combine a total scattering approach in both WAXS and PDF regimes to elucidate the evolution of the sulfuric acid’s solution structure with concentration. The resulting model describes the interplay of the local sulfate solvation environment and intermolecular sulfate-sulfate interactions, resulting in the condensation and polymerization of sulfate ions into cluster-like structures with limited or no water coordination at high concentration. Understanding the solution morphology of sulfuric acid is an important step toward modeling varying speciation near a charged interface or during the growth/dissolution of sulfate minerals

Evolution of local and mesoscale structure in sulfuric acid with varying concentration

ACS Spring 2022

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