The sodium-ammonia solution system permits investigation of an array of compositions spanning the transition from non-metallic to metallic bonding. Reflection spectra in the range 1-20 [ ] were measured for solutions of mole ratio 5.5 to 168 [ ] per Na. The dilute solutions show peaks characteristic of the vibrations of ammonia and a strong peak near 1.5 [ ] which is assigned to the solvated [ ] species. Concentrated solutions show high reflectivity over broad wavelength ranges. The results for nearly saturated solutions are fitted reasonably by the free electron model, but in the range of mole ratio 10-15 a complex array of energy absorption processes of finite frequencies are required to fit the spectra.
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Beckman et al. (1961) studied this question.