PROJECT SUMMARY REPORT

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Project Title / Investigation of small water clusters in ionic liquids with THz radiation
Name of Group Leader / Prof. Lendl
Home Laboratory / TU Vienna, Institute of Chemical Technologies and Analytics
E-mail address /
Telephone / +43 1 58801 15140
Bessy Project Number
(e.g. BESSY-ID.xx.x.xxx
or BESSY-BM.xx.x.xxx) / BM.06.1.193

1. Project objectives (no more than 10 lines)

Sequential Injection Analysis (SIA) shall be used to dissolve water in lowest possible amounts in ionic liquids in order to study single water molecules or small water clusters, respectively. Exploiting the spectral region between 10 and 600 cm-1 gives access to several water bands at once, where influence of differently bounded water can be studied. The Synchrotron is the only light source that can provide such a high dynamic spectral range starting from 10 cm-1 (or even lower when used in the low alpha mode).

2. Main achievements and difficulties encountered (no more than 20 lines)

SIA profiles of varying amount of water injected in 3 different ionic liquids could be successfully recorded using SIR in the region from 20 to 400 cm-1. Similar profiles containing a dominant band at ~150 cm-1 deriving from an intermolecular OH-stretch vibration could be recorded for BminBF4 and EminBF4, the two hydrophyilic ionic liquids. The appearance of this band lower than the expected 180 cm-1 allows for interpretation on the size of the water cluster. The SIA profile of the hydrophobic ionic liquid BminPF4 is lacking this band, meaning that the water is dissolved as single molecules in the ionic liquid. Further evaluation of the data is in progress.
The bending mode of the intermolecular OH-bond, which is weak in IR anyway, is unfortunatly overlaying with a broad band deriving from the ionic liquids.Therefore the data in the wavenumber region of < 100 cm-1 is difficult to interpret.