Structural Organization in Neat Ionic Liquids and in Their Mixtures

Anion and ether group influence in protic guanidinium ionic liquids

Ionic liquids are attractive liquid materials for many advanced applications. For targeted design, in-depth knowledge about their structure-property-relations is urgently needed. We prepared a set of novel protic ionic liquids (PILs) with a guanidinium cation with either an ether or alkyl side chain and different anions. While being a promising cation class, the available data is insufficient to guide design. We measured thermal and transport properties, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectra as well as liquid and crystalline structures supported by ab initio computations and were able to obtain a detailed insight into the influence of the anion and the ether substitution on the physical and spectroscopic properties. For the PILs, hydrogen bonding is the main interaction between cation and anion and the H-bond strength is inversely related to the proton affinity of the constituting acid and correlated to the increase of ¹H and ¹⁵N chemical shifts. Using anions from acids with lower proton affinity leads to proton localization on the cation as evident from NMR spectra and self-diffusion coefficients. In contrast, proton exchange was evident in ionic liquids with triflate and trifluoroacetate anions. Using imide-type anions and ether side groups decreases glass transitions as well as fragility, and accelerated dynamics significantly. In case of the ether guanidinium ionic liquids, the conformation of the side chain adopts a curled structure as the result of dispersion interactions, while the alkyl chains prefer a linear arrangement.

An Overview of Structure and Dynamics Associated with Hydrophobic Deep Eutectic Solvents and Their Applications in Extraction Processes

Recent development of novel water-immiscible green solvents known as hydrophobic deep eutectic solvents (HDESs) has opened the gates for applications requiring media where presence of water is undesirable. Ever since they were prepared, researchers have used HDESs in diverse fields such as extraction processes, CO 2 sequestration, membrane formation, and catalysis. The microstructure and dynamics associated with the species comprising HDESs guide their suitability for specific applications. For example, varying the alkyl tail length of HDES components significantly affects the dynamics of the components and thus helps in tuning the efficiency of extraction processes. The development of HDESs is still in infancy and very few theoretical studies are available in the literature that help in understanding the structure and dynamics of HDESs. This review highlights the recent work focused on the microscopic structure and dynamics of HDESs and their potential applications, particularly in extraction processes. We have also provided a glimpse of how the integration of experiments and computational techniques can help understand the mechanism of extraction processes.

In situ nanoscale evaluation of pressure-induced changes in structural morphology of phosphonium phosphate ionic liquid at single-asperity contacts

In this work, we perform atomic force microscopy (AFM) experiments to evaluate in situ the dependence of the structural morphology of trihexyltetradecylphosphonium bis(2-ethylhexyl) phosphate ([P_6,6,6,14][DEHP]) ionic liquid (IL) on applied pressure. The experimental results obtained upon sliding a diamond-like-carbon-coated silicon AFM tip on mechanically polished steel at an applied pressure up to 5.5 ± 0.3 GPa indicate a structural transition of confined [P_6,6,6,14][DEHP] molecules. This pressure-induced morphological change of [P_6,6,6,14][DEHP] IL leads to the generation of a lubricious, solid-like interfacial layer, whose growth rate increases with applied pressure and temperature. The structural variation of [P_6,6,6,14][DEHP] IL is proposed to derive from the well-ordered layering of the polar groups of ions separated by the apolar tails. These results not only shed new light on the structural organization of phosphonium-based ILs under elevated pressure, but also provide novel insights into the normal pressure-dependent lubrication mechanisms of ILs in general.

Crystallization of mixtures of hydrophilic ionic liquids and water: Evidence of microscopic inhomogeneities

HYPOTHESIS

We compare the effects of water, either intentionally added or due to absorption from the air, on the phase diagram of the hydrophilic 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium dicyanamide ionic liquid, extending previous investigations to lower temperatures (down to 140 K), with a special attention to the changes of the environment of water molecules and the interface between water and ionic liquid as a function of temperature.

EXPERIMENTS

Combined infrared spectroscopy and ab-initio calculations provide information about the phase transitions and the intermolecular changes occurring in the liquid.

FINDINGS

The temperature dependence of the mid-infrared spectrum in the temperature range between 140 and 330 K indicates that in both cases the liquid undergoes a glass transition, but, when the water content is only due to absorption from air, a cold crystallization takes place on heating between ≈240 and ≈265 K, while it is suppressed when water is intentionally added in a greater amount. The analysis of the OH stretching bands indicates the existence of two different "liquid like" water environments. When cold crystallization takes places the water molecules, which seem less coordinated to the other H₂O molecules and more related to the anions, appear to be part of the crystallized sample. In both cases, it seems that at microscopic level the sample is not homogeneous, but more likely it is composed of separated clusters or regions of bulk water confined in the ionic liquid.

Relaxation in a Prototype Ionic Liquid: Influence of Water on the Dynamics

The influence of water on the relaxation of a prototype ionic liquid (IL) C₈mimBF₄ is examined in the IL-rich regime combining quasi-elastic neutron scattering (QENS) and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. The QENS and MD simulations results for relaxation of IL and the equimolar mixture with water probed by the dynamics of the C₈mim hydrogen atoms in the time range of 2 ps to 1 ns are in excellent agreement. The QENS data show that translational relaxation increases by a factor of 7 on the addition of water, while rotational relaxation involving multiple processes fitted by a KWW function with low β values is speeded up by a factor of 3 on the time scale of QENS measurements. The MD simulations show that the cation diffusion coefficient, inverse viscosity, and ionic conductivity increase on the addition of water, consistent with the very small change in ionicity. The difficulties in obtaining rotational and translational diffusion coefficients from fits to QENS experiments of pure ILs and IL-water mixtures are discussed.

The dynamic process of atmospheric water sorption in [BMIM][Ac]: quantifying bulk versus surface sorption and utilizing atmospheric water as a structure probe

The dynamic process of the atmospheric water absorbed in acetate-based ionic liquid 1-butyl-3-methyl-imidazolium acetate ([BMIM][Ac]) within 360 min could be described with three steps by using two-dimensional correlation infrared (IR) spectroscopy technique. In Step 1 (0-120 min), only bulk sorption via hydrogen bonding interaction occurs. In Step 2 (120-320 min), bulk and surface sorption takes place simultaneously via both hydrogen bonding interaction and van der Waals force. In Step 3, from 320 min to steady state, only surface sorption via van der Waals force occurs. Specifically, Step 2 could be divided into three substeps. Most bulk sorption with little surface sorption takes place in Step 2a (120-180 min), comparative bulk and surface sorption happens in Step 2b (180-260 min), and most surface sorption while little bulk sorption occurs in Step 2c (260-320 min). Interestingly, atmospheric water is found for the first time to be able to be used as a probe to detect the chemical structure of [BMIM][Ac]. Results show that one anion is surrounded by three C4,5H molecules and two anions are surrounded by five C2H molecules via hydrogen bonds, which are very susceptible to moisture water especially for the former one. The remaining five anions form a multimer (equilibrating with one dimer and one trimer) via a strong hydrogen bonding interaction, which is not easily affected by the introduction of atmospheric water. The alkyl of the [BMIM][Ac] cation aggregates to some extent by van der Walls force, which is moderately susceptible to the water attack. Furthermore, the proportion of bulk sorption vs surface sorption is quantified as about 70% and 30% within 320 min, 63% and 37% within 360 min, and 11% and 89% until steady-state, respectively.