Ferroelectric phase transitions near ionic liquid/vacuum interfaces.
A simple theoretical model is developed describing ionic liquids as regular solutions. The separation of these ionic mixtures is studied on the base of the Cahn-Hilliard theory coupled with electrostatics. It is shown that the ionic liquids decompose to thin layers of oppositely charged liquids at low temperatures. At larger temperatures the separation occurs only near the ionic liquid/vacuum surface, thus explaining the oscillatory-decaying structure of the electric double layer observed via computer simulations. In contrast to noncharged liquids the ionic ones exhibit two critical temperatures, where the temperature coefficients of all characteristic lengths possess singularities. These second order ferroelectric phase transitions are possible explanations of the experimentally measured via light scattering peculiar temperature dependence of the interfacial dipole moment density on several ionic liquid/vacuum interfaces.
Tsekov
Roumen
R
Department of Physical Chemistry, University of Karlsruhe, 76131 Karlsruhe, Germany.