Theory of the salt effect on solvatochromic shifts and its potential application to the determination of ground-state and excited-state dipole moments

The theory of solvatochromism based on a dielectric continuum description of the solvent and the classical Onsager cavity model was investigated and was extended to include the effect of an added 1:1 salt. The equations differed markedly for salt-free case, from several others reported in the literature dealing with the pure solvent effect and the discrepancy was clarified.