Solubility

Solubility is the ability of a substance (the solute), to mix into a liquid (the solvent).

It measures the highest amount of substance mixed into a liquid solvent while they are both at equal amounts. When the two mix together it is called a saturated solution. Certain substances can mix into any amount of a liquid solvent. An example of this is ethanol in water. This process is better described as "miscible" (the ability to mix with one another). Solubility does not depend on the size, in fact even the large particles will eventually all dissolve.

A solute is a substance that is dissolving in a solvent and is the smaller part of the solution. A solvent is the bigger part of a solution and is the substance that the solute dissolves in.

Solubility Media

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  Example of a dissolved solid (left)

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  Formation of crystals in a 4.2 M ammonium sulfate solution. The solution was initially prepared at 20 °C and then stored for 2 days at 4 °C.

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  SolubilityVsTemperature

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  Dissolution of sodium chloride in water

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  Thermodynamic cycle for calculating solvation via sublimation

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  Thermodynamic cycle for calculating solvation via fusion

Other websites

• ALOGPS Archived 2007-04-10 at the Wayback Machine interactive calculation of aqueous solubility of compounds at Virtual Computational Chemistry Laboratory Archived 2006-07-28 at the Wayback Machine using several algorithms
• QUANTUM Archived 2007-05-16 at the Wayback Machine web based calculation of aqueous and DMSO solubility of compounds QUANTUM web based prediction of aqueous and DMSO solubility of compounds
• ACD/Solubility DB Archived 2007-07-14 at the Wayback Machine aqueous solubility prediction