Molecular dynamics studies on the structure and interactions of ionic liquids containing amino-acid anions.

Several molecular dynamics (MD) simulations have been performed in order to obtain structural information on ionic liquids (ILs) based on amino-acid anions. Six hydrophilic ILs containing cholinium or imidazolium cations combined with alaninate, glycinate or lysinate anions were modelled using the all-atom CL&P and OPLS-AA force fields. Both pure ILs and their aqueous solutions have been studied. The MD data have allowed us to analyse structure factors, S(q), and pair radial distributions functions, g(r), as well as aggregation patterns and specific interactions. The results have shown us that in neat amino-acid-based ILs the anions interact mainly through their carboxylate moiety with the charged centres of the cations. Both the lack of heavy atoms and the small size of the interacting centre in the anion contribute to the absence of a charge ordering peak in the structure factor functions of the corresponding ILs. In turn, their aqueous solutions reveal the existence of small ionic aggregates. The size distribution of these aggregates is strongly dependent on the solution's concentration. This fact points to the possibility of using amino-acid-based ILs as agents to promote hydrotrope effects, significant for the solubilisation and stabilization of organic molecules and macromolecules in aqueous solution.

Rationalizing the diverse solid-liquid equilibria of binary mixtures of benzene and its fluorinated derivatives.

The solid-liquid phase behavior of benzene plus hexafluorobenzene binary mixtures is characterized by a stable congruent-melting binary solid, (C(6)H(6)·C(6)F(6)). In this work, differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) was used to build, for the first time, the temperature-composition phase diagrams of ten other binary mixtures involving benzene and its fluorinated derivatives. Distinct types of solid-liquid equilibria were observed, namely those exhibiting the usual eutectic behavior associated with ideal or quasi-ideal solubility conditions, or, in other cases, systems with equimolar congruent-melting solids. Data have been interpreted and rationalized using a unifying framework that takes into account the molecular dipole and quadrupole moments of the two components of each binary system and the structural motifs associated with each type of crystal.

New insight into phase equilibria involving imidazolium bistriflamide ionic liquids and their mixtures with alcohols and water.

The fluid phase equilibria (liquid-liquid demixing behavior (LLE)) of mixtures of ionic liquids of the 1-alkyl-3-methylimidazolium bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)imide family, [C(n)mim][NTf(2)], with 2-methylpropanol or n-octanol were investigated. Binary mixtures of [C(4)mim][NTf(2)] + alcohol and [C(6)mim][NTf(2)] + alcohol were compared to pseudobinary mixtures of (0.5[C(2)mim] + 0.5[C(6)mim])[NTf(2)] + alcohol and (0.5[C(2)mim] + 0.5[C(10)mim])[NTf(2)] + alcohol, respectively. Additionally, the presence of water in the studied alcohols or as a third component in the system was analyzed in order to check any possible deviation from the LLE observed for the anhydrous systems. Systems containing small fractions of ionic liquid show similar LLE between the corresponding binary and pseudobinary systems; however, large differences are observed in the presence of water when the IL mass fraction is increased.