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Updated: Jan 8, 2026

From Molecules to Materials: Engineering New Ionic Liquid Crystals Through Halogen Bonding
Published on: March 24, 2018
Tethered from the Head and from the Tail: The Structure of Hydroxyl-Functionalized Ionic Liquids
Raphael Ogbodo1, Ieesha Ansar2, Clinton Adu3
1Department of Chemistry, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa 52242, United States.
Abstract:
Ionic liquids with special functionalities are synthesized with the specific purpose of creating new patterns of interaction in the condensed phase. This Letter discusses the case of alcohol-functionalized ILs, the so-called HFILs, which are part of the larger cohort of task-specific ionic liquids. We find that this small chemical modification can cause massive changes in the liquid landscape when the cationic tails are longer. For prototypical ionic liquids, larger alkyl tails act as separators of charge networks, but in the case of HFILs these become physical charge network linkers. The OH functionality adds a large repertoire of interactions and correlations that were mostly unavailable to traditional ILs.
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