Emerging Evidences of Mesoscopic-Scale Complexity in Neat Ionic Liquids and Their Mixtures

Ionic liquids (ILs) represent a blooming class of continuously developing advanced materials, with the aiming of a green chemical industry. Their appealing physical and chemical properties are largely influenced by their micro- and mesoscopic structure that is known to possess a high degree of hierarchical organization. High-impact application fields are largely affected by the complex morphology of neat ionic liquids and their mixtures. This Perspective highlights new arising research directions that point to an enhanced level of structural complexity in several IL-based systems, including mixtures. The latter represent a change in paradigm in the approach to formulate new, task-specific IL-based media, and the reported phenomenology has the potential to further expand their range of applications by calling for a revisitation of the nature of interactions in these exciting media.