Nanoscale Segregation in Room Temperature Ionic Liquids

Room-temperature ionic liquids (RTILs) are organic salts that are characterized by low melting points. They are considered to possess a homogeneous microscopic structure. We provide the first experimental evidence of the existence of nanoscale heterogeneities in neat liquid and supercooled RTILs, such as 1-alkyl-3-methyl imidazolium-based salts, using X-ray diffraction. These heterogeneities are of the order of a few nanometers and their size is proportional to the alkyl chain length. These results provide strong support to the findings from recent molecular dynamics simulations, which proposed the occurrence of nanostructures in RTILs, as a consequence of alkyl chains segregation. Moreover, our study…