Ionic liquids have been of great interest throughout this century and continue to find new applications in both academia and industry. This is largely due to their great versatility, with millions of potential combinations of cations and anions, which has led to them being described as 'designer solvents'. However, this leads to its own problems when it comes to choosing the optimum ionic liquid for any given application. To fully exploit this versatility, it is imperative to understand how the properties of ionic liquids arise from their constituent ions.

To derive meaningful structure-property relationships for ionic liquids is a complex task. It can be particularly difficult to isolate the cause of any property change arising from even simple modifications of ions. For example, changing the length of the alkyl chain of a cation in an ionic liquid also changes the volume and mass of the ion, all of which can affect a property such as ion mobility and consequent properties such as the viscosity and conductivity of the ionic liquid. A ‘targeted modification’ is a deliberate change in the structure of an ionic liquid ion that is designed to minimise the introduction of such confounding factors. The change must isolate what is of interest, so that we can study only one concept at a time. Once these structure-property relationships have been clearly defined, it will be possible to use these as design elements for new ionic liquids.

As well as experimental observations, it is possible to apply the targeted modification approach to a computer simulation. This provides both insight into experimental observations and predictions of potential targeted modifications before complex synthesis is attempted. Together, theory and experiment will enable the concept of ionic liquids as designer solvents to be realised.

In this presentation we apply the targeted modifications approach to the transport properties of ionic liquids.