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Updated: Jul 14, 2026

From Molecules to Materials: Engineering New Ionic Liquid Crystals Through Halogen Bonding
Published on: March 24, 2018
Structure and solvation in ionic liquids
Christopher Hardacre1, John D Holbrey, Mark Nieuwenhuyzen
1School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Queen's University Belfast, Belfast BT9 5AG, UK. c.hardacre@qub.ac.uk
Abstract:
This Account describes experimental data used to understand the structure of ionic liquids and solute-solvent interactions of both molecular solutes and dissolved metal complexes. In general, the structures of the ionic liquids determined from experimental data show good agreement with both simulated structures and solid-state structures. For all ionic liquids studied, strong charge ordering is found leading to long-range order even in the presence of a solute. For dissolved metal complexes, the ionic liquid is not innocent and a clear dependence on the speciation is observed with variations in both the cation and anion.
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