Ionic compound | EPFL Graph Search

In chemistry, an ionic compound is a chemical compound composed of ions held together by electrostatic forces termed ionic bonding. The compound is neutral overall, but consists of positively charged ions called cations and negatively charged ions called anions. These can be simple ions such as the sodium (Na+) and chloride (Cl−) in sodium chloride, or polyatomic species such as the ammonium (NH4+) and carbonate (CO32−) ions in ammonium carbonate. Individual ions within an ionic compound usually have multiple nearest neighbours, so are not considered to be part of molecules, but instead part of a continuous three-dimensional network. Ionic compounds usually form crystalline structures when solid. Ionic compounds containing basic ions hydroxide (OH−) or oxide (O2−) are classified as bases. Ionic compounds without these ions are also known as salts and can be formed by acid–base reactions. Ionic compounds can also be produced from their constituent ions by evaporation of their solvent,

Lattice Energy as Emerging General Parameter Describing Ionic Organic Semiconducting Materials Properties

Donatas Gesevicius

Cyanine dyes represent a class of ionic functional materials used by a broad heterogeneous science community contain-ing biologists, chemists, physicists and materials scientists. Their diverse application opportunities are ranging from fluorescence markers, nonlinear optics, CD-R data storage, photography and organic electronics. Therefore the development of cyanine dyes and their applications in chemistry, engineering, medicine and pharmacology is growing continuously. A typical leitmotif of a cyanine dye contains two nitrogen heterocyclic rings joined by a conjugated chain of carbon atoms. Due to the synthetic approach, quaternary salt precursors are required resulting in ionic compounds. Such chromophores are positively charged and require a counter anion to maintain the overall charge neutrality. Several reports were presenting certain anions as efficiency enhancers in cyanine dye based organic electronic devices. Despite their long presence in science, there is a lack of knowledge behind the mechanisms causing these efficiency enhancements. Furthermore, in the field of organic electronics, the processability of cyanine dyes towards electronic devices was restricted to solution-based methods. In the present thesis work the three main challenges in cyanine dye research, namely: efficient ion exchange procedures, mechanisms behind organic electronics figures of merit enhancement as well as the introduction of physical vapour deposition method have been addressed. An efficient halide-for-anion exchange method with the potential for industry scale up was introduced. This allowed modifying a cationic cyanine chromophore with organic or inorganic anions yielding six salts. The following investigations of these six anions by either varying organic moieties or negative charge delocalisation paved the way towards a generalized concept describing the semiconducting properties of this cationic cyanine chromophore. The lattice energy was established as a universal parameter describing cyanine salt semiconducting properties on a universal energy scale. Such decoupling of an ionic structure from its Lewis formula allows future predictions of semiconducting properties which can be widened to all organic ionic functional materials. Furthermore weakly coordinating anion influence on the volatility of a cyanine chromophore established physical vapour deposition as thin film fabrication method. Using co-evaporation of the cyanine dye and the fullerene C60 a suitable bulk heterojunction morphology was obtained. This resulted in the fabrication of the first fully vacuum deposited cyanine dye bulk heterojunction device.

EPFL2018

Novel Ionic Liquids For Electrochemical Applications

Pui Shan Genevieve Lau

This thesis is organized into three main sections, and is concerned with the design and synthesis of novel ionic liquids (ILs), and their associated electrochemical applications. In the first section, a general introduction to the field of ionic liquids is presented, followed by the synthesis and characterization details of all novel compounds used in the study. The second section summarizes work done on the development of more stable dye-sensitized solar cells (DSCs). An introduction to the field of photovoltaics and DSCs is first delivered in Chapter 3, which is followed by two chapters of original work on ionic liqiud-based electrolytes for DSC applications. In Chapter 4, it is shown that novel triazolium-based ionic liquids can be used to fabricate dye-sensitized solar cells, giving power conversion efficiencies of up to 6.00 %. The ionic liquid-based electrolytes are found to be compatible with a range of organic and inorganic photosensitizers, although the ruthenium-based dye (coded C106) exhibits the best performance. A device employing one of these newly-developed electrolytes is also shown to be very stable, retaining ca. 90% of its initial performance even after 1000 hours of continuous full sun illumination at 60 âŠC. In Chapter 5, we focus on the development of stable porphyrin-sensitized solar cells, using IL-based electrolytes. Our studies reveal that the long-term stability of porphyrin-based DSCs are highly dependent on additives in the electrolyte. In particular, it is found that the additive, guanidinium thiocyanate, is essential for the preparation of long-lived devices. It is also shown that the beneficial effect of this additive originates from the thiocyanate anion, rather than the guanidinium cation. The third section of this thesis deals with the ionic liquid-catalyzed electroï¿Œchemical reduction of carbon dioxide. Following a general introduction on carbon dioxide mitigation using ionic liquids (Chapter 6), the results of our work in this area are presented in Chapter 7. Our studies reveal that not all ionic liquids are stable at the potentials required for CO2 reduction. However, the imidazolium-based salts generally perform quite well. The catalytic effect of the IL is found to mainly stem from the cation, with the anion playing a somewhat secondary role. Our results also demonstrate that substitutions on the imidazolium ring can have a huge impact on catalysis. Product analysis shows that the best-performing catalyst produces carbon monoxide as the dominant product, with Faradaic efficiencies of between 70 to 80 %.

EPFL2015

Investigations of Diels-Alder reactions in ionic liquids

Ana Vidis

Room temperature ionic liquids comprise an unique class of solvent composed of organic and inorganic-based ions that are molten under ambient conditions. They are characterised by high solvent polarity and low vapour pressure, and can be tailored to have specific physical and chemical properties. Consequently, there has been great interest in exploiting these attributes to accelerate and control organic reactions. One such reaction, the Diels-Alder reaction, is an important [4+2] cycloaddition reaction used extensively in the preparation of cyclic and heterocyclic compounds. Understanding the factors involved in the enhancing this reaction in ionic liquids remains a subject of intense interest and the centrepiece of the dissertation. The objective of the research is to explore the Diels-Alder cycloaddition reaction in ionic liquids, with a view of developing high effective reactions systems, that operate under mild reaction conditions. The role that ionic liquid media plays in facilitating the Diels-Alder reaction is discussed. A range of physical and chemical modes of activating the reaction are discussed including pressure, the application of Lewis acid catalysts, microwave irradiation and ultrasound sonication and a comparison on the various modes of activation is provided. Importantly, the results of this study can lead to a better understanding of the ionic liquids as well as their utilization for other organic reactions.

EPFL2007