Understanding Ionic Liquids at the Molecular Level: Facts, Problems, and Controversies

Ionic liquids (ILs) are organic salts with melting points near room temperature (or by convention below 100 degrees C). Recently, their unique materials and solvent properties and the growing interest in a sustainable, "green" chemistry has led to an amazing increase in interest in such salts. A huge number of potential cation and anion families and their many substitution patterns allows the desired properties for specific applications to be selected. Because it is impossible to experimentally investigate even a small fraction of the potential cation-anion combinations, a molecular-based understanding of their properties is crucial. However, the unusual complexity of their intermolecular interactions renders…