Investigation of the thermal lens effect in water-ethanol mixtures: composition dependence of the refractive index gradient, the enhancement factor and the Soret effect.

The thermal lens effect produced in binary mixtures of water and ethanol has been investigated. It is shown that the sensitivity of the thermal lens method upon the addition of ethanol in water varies as the temperature-dependent refractive index gradient to thermal conductivity ratio of the mixture. The dependence of k and dn/dT upon the ethanol volume fraction follows a second-order and fourth-order polynomial, respectively, and cannot be precisely predicted using the additive rule. Moreover, depending on the experimental conditions and the mixture composition, the temperature gradient produced subsequently to relaxation of the excited species induces mutual migration of the solvent molecules and the formation of a concentration gradient in the irradiated area. This effect, known as the Soret effect, can locally change the thermo-optical properties of the solution and produce an additional signal, especially when steady-state experiments are done. This may result in errors as large as 20% when quantitative informations have to be derived from experimental data.