Investigation of structural ordering in network forming ionic liquids: A molecular dynamics study

KG Vishnu and A Strachan, JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL PHYSICS, 150, 144904 (2019).

DOI: 10.1063/1.5082186

Molecular dynamics simulations reveal anomalous short- and medium-range ordering with increasing temperature in network-forming ionic liquids (NIL) consisting of alkyl-diammonium cations with long side chains of 6 carbon atoms and citrate anions (NIL 5-6). This effect is weaker, and only a short-range order is observed in equivalent systems with side chains shortened to 3 C atoms (NIL 5-3). The short-range ordering can be attributed to volume expansion during heating, but the intermediate range order requires volume expansion as well as an increase in temperature. We find that the cross (cation-anion) interactions are the major contributors to the observed trend and the development of complex 3D correlations in the two-particle correlation functions. The simulations suggest that the above phenomenon can be correlated to local trapping of cation molecules in a variety of configurations at lower temperatures where molecular shape distributions show great variability; as temperature increases, the distribution of molecular radii of gyration becomes narrower, enabling the increased ordering. Published under license by AIP Publishing.

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