Imidazolium decyl sulfate: a very promising selfmade ionic hydrogel

Abstract

Imidazolium decyl sulfate: a selfmade good ionic conducting hydrogel formed by water adsorption from atmosphere. Stable up to 85 °C.

New Insights on the Characterization of the Ionic Liquid Crystal 1-Ethyl-3-Methylimidazolium Decylsulfate

“…This water content corresponds to an IL molar fraction of x IL = 0.54. The clearing point matches the one provided at the same IL concentration in the phase diagram published in ref for binary mixtures of [EMIm]­[DSO 4 ] and water.…”

“…1-Ethyl-3-methylimidazolium decylsulfate [EMIm]­[DSO 4 ] is an IL composed by an imidazolium cation owning two short alkyl chains and an alkylsulfate anion containing a ten carbons alkyl chain as shown in Table . It was synthesized and purified following the procedure described in ref . The chemical precursors were used without further purification and bought from different commercial distributors: 1-methylimidazolium and 1-decanol (Sigma-Aldrich, 0.99 mass purity), methanesulfonic acid (Aldrich, anhydrous), tert -butyl methyl ether (Panreac, 0.995 mass purity), toluene (Merck 0.99 mass purity), and diethyl sulfate (Fluka, 0.99 mass purity).…”

“…Furthermore, there is also an intense activity in the design of new families of intrinsically mesogenic cations. , The anion influence on the mesogenic character of ILCs is also the focus of some studies, and it is well-known that some anion families facilitate the liquid crystal behavior while others could prevent it . In particular, the alkylsulfate anion family, showing an important surfactant character, has shown high aggregation ability when forming part of ILs dissolved in water, driving the formation of micelles. − It is often combined with mesogenic cations to facilitate the achievement of ILCs. − , Furthermore, it has shown to act as an anionic mesogen when paired to weakly mesogenic cations in cases where small amounts of water are present. , The election of the proper cation and anion pair not only produces liquid-crystalline behavior in the tailored IL but also allows choosing the desired liquid crystal phase. For instance, despite the smectic lamellar (SmA) phases are the most common ones, − , hexagonal smectic (SmB) phases, columnar rectangular (Col r ) phases, columnar hexagonal (Col h ) phases, − or even bicontinuous cubic (Cub bi ) phases have been obtained by carefully choosing the ILC components.…”

“…This paper aims to characterizing the liquid crystal phase of the lyotropic ILC 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium decylsulfate [EMIm]­[DSO 4 ] and measuring for first time its birefringence dispersion. It is a novel IL recently synthesized by some of the authors of this publication . When this IL is pure, it is an isotropic liquid, but when mixed with water, it forms a birefringent hydrogel, which is in fact a lyotropic liquid crystal phase stabilized when the water mass fraction ranges from 0.04 to 0.4 at ambient temperature.…”

An experimental and computational study on the material dispersion of 1-alkyl-3-methylimidazolium tetrafluoroborate ionic liquids

“…There are also examples of ILs owning thermochromic behaviour arising from different molecular mechanisms 17,18 . Furthermore, ILs can be tuned to produce ionic liquid crystals which are ILs showing liquid crystal behaviour [19][20][21][22] . The recent research evidences that the wise election of the combination of cation and anion enables the production of ILs with attractive tailored properties for optical materials.…”