Regensburg 2016 – scientific programme
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CPP: Fachverband Chemische Physik und Polymerphysik
CPP 33: Ionic Liquids and Water
CPP 33.7: Talk
Wednesday, March 9, 2016, 11:30–11:45, H40
Free interfaces in fluids of Ionic Liquid Crystals — •Hendrik Bartsch1,2, Markus Bier1,2, and Siegfried Dietrich1,2 — 1Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Stuttgart, Germany — 2University of Stuttgart, Germany
Recently, Ionic Liquid Crystals (ILCs) were attracting increasing scientific, as well as technological attention, since they are expected to exhibit unique structural properties, which are directly linked to the interplay of the anisotropy of the molecules, on the one hand, and their charges, on the other hand. Especially in inhomogeneous systems, e.g. fluids close to electrodes or free interfaces between fluid phases, this combination of properties can lead to new structures, which are not observable in ionic liquids or liquid crystals, separately.
Nevertheless, the theoretical understanding of the formation of interfaces in systems of ILCs is still incomplete. In particular, reliable predictions for the density and the nematic order parameter profiles are still rare. In order to address this open question, we study ILCs close to interfaces, by means of density functional theory. First, it will be shown that our approach resembles previous results for the bulk phase diagrams of charged and uncharged liquid crystals [1]. Ultimately, we will present new results on the free interface structure, for the liquid-gas and the smectic-liquid coexistence.
[1] S. Kondrat, M. Bier, and L. Harnau, J. Chem. Phys. 132, 184901 (2010)