Thermodynamics of micellization of imidazolium ionic liquids in aqueous solutions

The structural similarity between some ionic liquids (ILs) and ionic surfactants, indicates that ILs are expected to exhibit surface adsorption and aggregation properties. The Krafft temperature and the temperature dependence of the critical micelle concentration (CMC) were determined for four imidazolium ionic liquids with varying chain length by measuring concentration dependence of electrical conductivity at different temperatures. The magnitude of the thermodynamic parameters of the micelle formation provide valuable information about the driving force of micellization of these compounds, therefore, the parameters of these chemicals were estimated from the degree of ionization, and the CMC. The thermodynamic parameters were correlated to directly measured values using isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC). It was found that the long-chained imidazolium ILs show similar thermodynamic characteristics as traditional cationic surfactants, whereas the Krafft temperature was shown to be lower than that of traditional cationic surfactants of similar chain length.