Does the Like Dissolves Like Rule Hold for Fullerene and Ionic Liquids?

Abstract

Over 150 solvents have been probed to dissolve light fullerenes, but with a quite moderate success. We uncover unusual mutual polarizability of C 60 fullerene and selected room-temperature ionic liquids (RTILs), which can be applied in numerous applications, e.g. to significantly promote solubility/miscibility of highly hydrophobic C 60 molecule. We report electron density and molecular dynamics analysis supported by the state-of-the-art hybrid density functional theory and empirical simulations with a specifically refined potential.The analysis suggests a workability of the proposed scheme and opens a new direction to obtain well-dispersed fullerene containing systems. A range of common molecular solvents and novel ionic solvents are compared to 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium tetrafluoroborate.

Theoretical Study on the Solvation of C60 Fullerene by Ionic Liquids

“…Chaban et al 35 proposed in a recent work the use of 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium tetrafluoroborate, [BMIM][BF 4 ], ionic liquid for C60 dispersion, leading to solubilities, predicted using molecular dynamics simulations, as high as 66 g L −1 at 333 K. Results by Chaban et al 35 showed a strong charge transfer between the C60 and its solvation shell for imidazolium and pyridinium ILs, whereas this behavior is not present in the cases of ammonium and phosphonium ILs. Additional molecular dynamics simulation studies by Fileti 4 ] to enhance the dispersion of C60 in water solutions, which is of remarkable relevance for applications in the biomedical field.…”

Theoretical Study on the Solvation of C60Fullerene by Ionic Liquids II: DFT Analysis of the Interaction Mechanism

“…5,6 In this work, its BE IL-C60 = 10.66 kcal mol -1 , which can be considered as a low limit from which larger BE IL-C60 could be a good starting point for the search of new ILs with improved solvation features.…”

“…Fileti et al 8 have hypothesized, using computational chemistry approaches, that the solubility of C 60 in room temperature ionic liquids (ILs), based on imidazolium cation and tetrafluoroborate anion, is higher than those previously reported in other traditional solvents, 5 and thus, opening a new way for C 60 solubilization.…”

“…The majority of these works are based on the applications of classic Molecular Dynamics methods (MD). 4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11 Nevertheless, Density Functional Theory (DFT) simulations 12 or quantitative structure properties relationship (QSPR) 13 studies have been also published. Among the new alternatives studied for C 60 dispersion in solvents, the recent works by Chaban et al 5 …”

The force field for imidazolium-based ionic liquids: Novel anions with polar residues

“…[5,[9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20] The physical chemical properties of ILs are important for capturing toxic gases, separation applications through biphasic systems, solubilization of nanoscale entities, such as nanotubes and fullerenes. [1,12,13,[21][22][23] Amino acid (AA) ionic liquids (AAILs) are a relatively new research field. [24] They can be obtained from amino acids and bulky cations, such as imidazolium-based and phosphonium-based ones.…”