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Ionic Liquid Crystals are ionic liquids that exhibit liquid crystalline mesomorphism together with ionic conductivity. As known confined liquid crystal mesophases can show an anomalous dynamics and phase behavior. Investigations considering the factors controlling the macroscopic properties of ILCs in confinement are scare in the literature. This study reports the molecular mobility, and the phase transition behavior of a guanidinium based columnar ILC confined in the nanopores of self-ordered anodic aluminum oxide membranes of various pore diameters (25 – 180 nm) using Broadband Dielectric Spectroscopy (BDS), calorimetry and X-ray scattering. It is aimed to reveal in which way the pore size as well as the pore surface wettability (hydrophobic or hydrophilic) alters the molecular dynamics, and phase transition behavior for this system. These properties are crucial for applications. The DSC investigations reveal: (i) the phase transition temperature for the transition from the plastic crystalline to the crystalline-liquid state has non-monotonic dependence versus the inverse pore diameter and (ii) the transition from the liquid crystalline to the isotropic phase is suppressed for all nanoconfined samples. This transition suppressed in the thermal signal was evidenced by BDS and X-ray scattering. It is discussed as a continuous phase transition taking place in the pores instead of a discontinuous first order transition as observed for the bulk. BDS investigations show different relaxation processes for the bulk and the nanoconfined ILC. Molecular origins for various relaxation processes are discussed and suggested. It is further shown that the self-assembly of this ILC is dynamic in nature which might apply for other ILCs too. The obtained results will have implications for the nanoscale applications of ionic liquid crystals.
We study the molecular mobility and electrical conductivity of a homologous series of linear shaped columnar ionic liquid crystals ILCn, (n = 8, 10, 12, 14, 16) using broadband dielectric spectroscopy (BDS), specific heat spectroscopy (SHS), and X-ray scattering. We aim to understand how the alkyl chain length influences the dynamics and electric conductivity in this system. Two dielectrically active relaxation modes are observed, the γ and the αcore process, that correspond to the localized fluctuations of the alkyl chains and cooperative motions of the aromatic core in the columns, respectively. Both the γ relaxation and the αcore process slow down with increasing alkyl chain length. SHS reveals one relaxation process, the αalkyl process that has a similar temperature dependence as that of the αcore process for ILC12, 14, and 16 but shifts to higher temperature for ILC8 and 10. For ILC12, 14, and 16, the absolute values of DC conductivity increase by 4 orders of magnitude at the transition from the plastic crystalline to hexagonal columnar phase. For ILC8 and 10, the DC conductivity behavior is similar to ionic liquids, where the conductivity is coupled with structural relaxation. Small-angle X-ray investigations reveal that both the intercolumnar distance and the disorder coherence length increase with alkyl chain length; conversely, the DC conductivity decreases monotonically.