Abstract: Ionic liquids (IL) attract major attention as advanced electrolytes, solvents and reaction control agents. However, up to date, their structure-property relationship remains mostly empirical. Despite being essentially a Coulomb-type system, in many aspects their properties are governed by weaker interactions – hydrogen bonding and even dispersion interactions. Although the Coulomb interaction is more than an order of magnitude stronger than the hydrogen bond, the local and directional nature of the hydrogen bond matters and influences characteristically the properties of these fluid salts. Normally, the formation of hydrogen bonds between cation and anion increases the attractive Coulomb interaction and tightens the interaction between the oppositely charged ions, resulting in preformation of ion-pairs, i.e. the (c-a) pairs.

Cite: Kolokolov D.I. , Khudozhitkov A.E. , Ludwig R.
Dissecting the Mobility of Ion Pair from Cationic Clusters in Hydroxylated Ionic Liquids by 2H NMR
The EMLG International Conference 2022: Theory, Simulation, Experiment 12-16 Sep 2022