Abstract
Ionic liquids belong to the most investigated systems in the recent years and this field is still significantly growing with an increased focus on developing ionic liquids for specific applications, along with fundamental research. In the present featured paper the similarity and differences between common, "classical" electrolytes and common surfactants and ionic liquids along with the surface-active ionic liquids are discussed in order to stress their significance and point out on their weak points. A short survey of the literature data reveals namely that ionic liquids in solutions behave like "classical" electrolytes and can be described by existing models in the range of their validity. There is still a lack of models describing well the concentrated electrolyte solutions and here ionic liquids, less limited by solubility as common electrolytes, can serve as model systems. The micellization of surface-active ionic liquids in aqueous solutions can be described in the same way as for common surfactants, but surface-active ionic liquids offer more possibilities to study specific ion and isomer effects. They are also quite promising systems to study the aggregation processes in non-aqueous solutions.
Highlights
Ionic liquids (ILs) are molecules composed of anions and cations in which at least one component is an organic molecular structure that hinders efficient close packing
Whereas understanding the properties of pure ILs is of fundamental interest, the practical applications generally require the admixture of other compounds, acting either as a reactant or product or as a cosolvent required for process optimization.[10]
It can be concluded that ILs are complex in their pure state, where the structure is strongly dependent on the structures of cations and anions enabling and/or hindering the packaging and/or arrangement of IL molecules
Summary
Ionic liquids (ILs) are molecules composed of anions and cations in which at least one component is an organic molecular structure that hinders efficient close packing. As suitable systems for a wide range of applications they attracted the attention of many researchers.[1] It turned out[2] that ILs are more complex than molecular solvents and their bulk and interfacial structures are markedly different. They show rich structural diversity both in the nature of ions that can be employed as well as in the organization of these ions in the liquid phase. Plored opportunities for manipulating their structure to control their functions and applications
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