Electrochemical properties of the double layer of an ionic liquid using a dimer model electrolyte and density functional theory.

Most theoretical studies of the properties of an electrolyte, including an ionic liquid, treat the electrolyte as a mixture of charged hard spheres in a solvent modeled as a dielectric continuum. However, ionic liquids generally consist of nonspherical ions that are not dissolved in a solvent. A simple extension of the primitivel model of electrolytes is to represent an ionic liquid as a mixture of charged hard spheres (negative monovalent ions in our case) and nonspherical ions consisting of a dimer of two touching hard spheres, one of which is charged (monovalent and positive in our case) and the other is neutral. This simple model has been used previously by Federov et al. and by ourselves. Here, we use the classical density functional theory to study the interfacial properties of the model ionic liquid over a range of electrode charges and two electrolyte concentrations. For simplicity, all of the spheres have the same diameter. In contrast to the simulations of Federov and Kornyshev, we find that a plot of the differential capacitance of the dimer electrolyte versus the surface potential typically exhibits only a single hump. Also, differing from the studies of Lamperski et al. for a spherical electrolyte, which showed a decline of the maximal differential capacitance as the ionic concentration decreases, the maximum of the differential capacitance of the dimer electrolyte increases slightly with decreasing ionic concentration. Our theoretical results show other unexpected effects of the geometry of ionic species on the electrochemical properties of the electric double layer of an ionic liquid.