On the abundance and general nature of the liquid–liquid phase transition in molecular systems

Even a single-component liquid may have more than two kinds of isotropic liquid states. The transition between these different states is called a liquid–liquid transition (LLT). An LLT has been considered to be a rather rare phenomenon, in particular for molecular liquids. Very recently, however, we found an LLT in triphenyl phosphite, which may be the first experimental observation of an LLT for molecular liquids. Here we report convincing evidence of the second example of LLT for another molecular liquid, n-butanol. Despite large differences in the chemical structure and the molecular shape between triphenyl phosphite and n-butanol, the basic features of the transformation kinetics are strikingly similar. This suggests that an LLT may not be a rare phenomenon restricted to specific liquids, but may exist in various molecular liquids, which have a tendency to form long-lived locally favoured structures due to anisotropic interactions (e.g., hydrogen bonding).