Dynamics and structure of room temperature ionic liquids

Room temperature ionic liquids (RTIL) are intrinsically interesting because they simultaneously have properties that are similar to organic liquids and liquid salts. In addition, RTILs are increasingly being considered for and used in technological applications. RTILs are usually composed of an organic cation and an inorganic anion. The organic cation, such as imidazolium, has alkyl chains of various lengths. The disorder in the liquid produced by the presence of the alkyl groups lowers the temperature for crystallization below room temperature and can also result in supercooling and glass formation rather than crystallization. The presence of the alkyl moieties also results in a segregation of the liquid into ionic and organic regions. In this article, experiments are presented that address the relationship between RTIL dynamics and structure. Time resolved fluorescence anisotropy measurements were employed to study the local environments in the organic and ionic regions of RTILs using a nonpolar chromophore that locates in the organic regions and an ionic chromophore that locates in the ionic regions. In the alkyl regions, the in plane and out of plane orientational friction coefficients change in different manners as the alkyl chains get longer. Both friction coefficients converge toward those of a long chain length hydrocarbon as the RTIL chains increase in length, which demonstrates that for sufficiently long alkyl chains the RTIL organic regions have properties similar to a hydrocarbon. However, putting Li+ in the ionic regions changes the friction coefficients in the alkyl regions, which demonstrates that changes of the ion structural organization influences the organization of the alkyl chains. Optical heterodyne detected optical Kerr effect (OHD-OKE) experiments were used to examine the orientational relaxation dynamics of RTILs over times scales of a hundred femtoseconds to a hundred nanoseconds. Detailed temperature dependent studies in the liquid and supercooled state and analysis using schematic mode coupling theory (MCT) show that RTILs have bulk liquid orientational relaxation dynamics that are indistinguishable in their nature from common nonpolar organic liquids that supercool. This behavior of the RTILs occurs in spite of the segregation into ionic and organic regions. However, when small amounts of water are added to RTILs at room temperature, novel dynamics are observed for the RTILs with long alkyl chains that have not been observed in OHD-OKE experiments on organic liquids. The results are interpreted as ;water induced structure in the ionic regions that causes the long alkyl chains to organize and 'lock up.' The dynamical measurements indicate that this lock up is involved in the formation of RTIL gels that occur over a narrow range of water concentrations. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.