Tethered from the Head and from the Tail: The Structure of Hydroxyl-Functionalized Ionic Liquids
Ionic liquids with special functionalities are synthesized with the specific purpose of creating new patterns of interaction in the condensed phase. This Letter discusses the case of alcohol-functionalized ILs, the so-called HFILs, which are part of the larger cohort of task-specific ionic liquids. We find that this small chemical modification can cause massive changes in the liquid landscape when the cationic tails are longer. For prototypical ionic liquids, larger alkyl tails act as separators of charge networks, but in the case of HFILs these become physical charge network linkers. The OH functionality adds a large repertoire of interactions and correlations that were mostly unavailable to traditional ILs.
Authors
- Andrew J. Nieuwkoop (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4557-1416)
- James F. Wishart (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0488-7636)
- Sharon I. Lall-Ramnarine (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7891-4548)
- Claudio J. Margulis (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1671-9784)
- Clinton Adu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0009-1149-8194)
- Raphael Ogbodo (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3355-8118)
- Ieesha Ansar (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0000-8929-5703)
Institutions
- Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey (US)
- University of Iowa (US)
- Brookhaven National Laboratory (US)
- Rutgers Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (NL)
- Division of Chemistry (US)
- Queensborough Community College, CUNY (US)
Publication Details
- Journal
- The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters
- Published
- 2025-12-11
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jpclett.5c03046
- Primary Topic
- Ionic liquids properties and applications
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00