Using 129Xe NMR to Probe the Structure of Ionic Liquids

The mesoscopic structure of 30 distinct ionic liquids was probed by Xe-129 NMR spectroscopy. The interpretation of the experimental data was complemented using molecular dynamics results. The results clearly show that xenon can effectively probe the various environments characteristic of different ionic liquids (ILs) and is thus able to distinguish between distinct ionic liquid families, including different types of interactions with diverse types of anion/polar networks. A finer analysis of the NMR data also confirmed that the xenon probes can also provide information on how the complex structure of an IL evolves along a homologous series.