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Updated: Oct 2, 2025

Confocal Imaging of Confined Quiescent and Flowing Colloid-polymer Mixtures
Published on: May 20, 2014
Rheological Characteristics of Ionic Liquids under Nanoconfinement
Mengwei Han1, Simon A Rogers2, Rosa M Espinosa-Marzal1,3
1Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois 61801, United States.
Abstract:
While the dynamic properties of ionic liquids (ILs) in nanoconfinement play a crucial role in the performance of IL-based electrochemical and mechanical devices, experimental work mostly falls short at reporting "solid-like" versus "liquid-like" behavior of confined ILs. The present work is the first to conduct frequency-sweep oscillatory-shear rheology on IL nanofilms, reconciling the solid-versus-liquid debate and revealing the importance of shear rate in the behavior. We disentangle and analyze the viscoelasticity of nanoconfined ILs and shed light on their relaxation mechanisms. Furthermore, a master curve describes the scaling of the dynamic behavior of four (non-hydrogen-bonding) ILs under nanoconfinement and reveals the role of the compressibility of the flow units.
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