Department of Solar Energy and Environmental Physics and Ben-Gurion National Solar Energy Center, Swiss Institute for Dryland Environmental and Energy Research, Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research (BIDR), Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Sede Boqer Campus, Midreshet Ben-Gurion 84990, Israel.
Phys Chem Chem Phys. 2014 Feb 21;16(7):2836-41. doi: 10.1039/c3cp55002h.
Intense investigations of room temperature ionic liquids have revealed not only their advantages in a wide range of technological applications but also triggered scientific debates about charge distribution properties within the bulk and near the solid-liquid interfaces. While many observations report on an alternating charge layering (i.e., spatially extended decaying charge density oscillations), there are recent conjectures that ionic liquids bear similarity to dilute electrolytes. Using a modified Poisson-Nernst-Planck model for ionic liquids (after Bazant et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 2011, 106, 046102), we show that both behaviors are fundamental properties of ionic liquids. The transition from the non-monotonic (oscillatory) to the monotonic structure of electrical diffuse layers appears to non-trivially depend on ionic density in the bulk, electrostatic correlation length, confinement and surface properties. Consequently, the results not only reconcile the empirical results but also provide a powerful methodology to gain insights into the nonlinear aspects of concentrated electrolytes.
室温离子液体的深入研究不仅揭示了它们在广泛的技术应用中的优势，还引发了关于在体相和固-液界面附近的电荷分布性质的科学争论。虽然许多观察报告指出存在交替的电荷分层（即空间扩展的衰减电荷密度振荡），但最近有猜测认为离子液体类似于稀电解质。我们使用改进的离子液体泊松-纳斯特-普朗克模型（基于 Bazant 等人，Phys. Rev. Lett. 2011, 106, 046102），表明这两种行为都是离子液体的基本性质。从非单调（振荡）到电扩散层的单调结构的转变似乎与体相中的离子密度、静电相关长度、限制和表面性质有关。因此，这些结果不仅调和了经验结果，而且提供了一种强大的方法来深入了解浓缩电解质的非线性方面。
