Conduction, breakdown and electronic-ionic phenomena in liquids

The subject matter of this chapter covers the same areas of research as last year. The separation between topics covered under conduction phenomena and those covered under electronic and ionic phenomena is sometimes arbitrary, e.g. upon localization or scavenging, the mobility of a quasi-free electron changes, thus affecting the conductivity of the medium. I have taken the liberty to report such work in a given section according to the emphasis the authors themselves placed on their findings and interpretation. It was observed that the amount of effort spent in the conduction and breakdown field decreased substantially from that in the previous year, but it would appear that this is due to the historically observed cyclical nature of things rather than a definite trend of decreasing interest. On the other hand, a very large number of publications appeared in the areas covered by the electronic and ionic phenomena section. This is mainly due to the input from the proceedings of the 1976 International Conference on Electrons in Fluids which were published in the Canadian Journal of Chemistry in the spring of 1977.