Coarse grained model for calculating the ion mobility of hydrocarbons

Hydrocarbons are widely used as insulating compounds. However, their fundamental characteristics in conduction phenomena are not completely understood. A great deal of effort is required to determine reasonable ionic behavior from experiments because of their complicated procedures and tight controls of the temperature and the purity of the liquids. In order to understand the conduction phenomena, we have theoretically calculated the ion mobilities of hydrocarbons and investigated their characteristics using the coarse grained model in molecular dynamics simulations. We assumed a molecule of hydrocarbons to be a bead and simulated its dependence on the viscosity, electric field, and temperature. Furthermore, we verified the suitability of the conformation, scale size, and long-range interactions for the ion mobility. The results of the simulations show that the ion mobility values agree reasonably well with the values from Walden’s rule and depend on the viscosity but not on the electric field. The ion mobility and self-diffusion coefficient exponentially increase with increasing temperature, while the activation energy decreases with increasing molecular size. These values and characteristics of the ion mobility are in reasonable agreement with experimental results. In the future, we can understand not only the ion mobilies of hydrocarbons in conduction, but also we can predict general phenomena in electrochemistry with molecular dynamics simulations.