The water/oil/water thermocouple and the ionic seebeck effect
Abstract
A new type of non-isothermal galvanic cell comprising two interfaces between immiscible electrolyte solutions is presented. It is shown that if only one ion can partition across the liquid/liquid interface, the water/nitrobenzene/water cell behaves as a performant thermocouple. The thermodynamic treatment shows that the thermopower of this system is equal to the difference of transported entropies of the partitioning ion.