Computational study of proton and methyl cation affinities of imidazole-based highly energetic ionic liquids

The present study deals with the evaluation of gas phase proton and methyl cation affinities for alkyl- and nitrosubstituted imidazoles using DFT (B3LYP)/6-31 + G(d) and MP2 methods in the Gaussian 03 software package. The extent of charge delocalization of these cations is correlated with proton affinity. The study reveals that weakly electron-donating alkyl groups at position 1 of the imidazole enhance its proton affinity, which also increases with increasing alkyl chain length. This is expected to result in an increased tendency to form salts. In contrast, the presence of strongly electron-withdrawing nitro groups lowers proton affinity, which decreases as the number of nitro groups on the ring increases. The same trend is observed for the methyl cation affinity, but to a lower degree. These trends in the proton and methyl cation affinities were analyzed to study the effects of these substituents on the basicity of the energetic imidazole moieties and their tendency to form salts. This, in turn, should aid searches for better highly energetic ionic liquids. In addition, calculations performed on different isomers of mono and dinitroimidazoles show that 5-nitro-1H-imidazole and 2,4-dinitro-1H-imidazole are more stable than the other isomers. Amongst the many nitro derivatives of imidazoles considered in the present study, cations resulting from these two would be the best choice for creating highly energetic ionic liquids when coupled with appropriate energetic anions.