Characterising room temperature ionic liquids with acoustic wave devices

Data for the physical properties of Room Temperature Ionic Liquids (RTILs) as a function of chemical composition is limited due to the expense and difficulty of producing large volumes of pure samples for characterization. RTILs comprise solely of ions and are liquid at room temperature. These are becoming of increasing interest for an extensive range of applications. This thesis looks at developing small scale characterization processes to find low cost and efficient methods for processing smaller sample volumes. Quartz crystal impedance analysis has been used to assess whether room temperature ionic liquids behave in a Newtonian manner to determine the values of their square root viscosity-density product using small volumes. Values are compared to traditional viscometer and densitometer measurements. A range of harmonics were studied for a 5 MHz fundamental crystal. The frequency shift of the third harmonic was found to provide the closest agreement between the two measurement methods with a limit seen at a square root viscosity-density product value of approximately 18 kg m??2 s??0:5. Further characterisation of the liquid was performed to separate values of density and viscosity using dual Quartz Crystal Microbalance (QCM) with fabricated surface features on one QCM; this required a total sample volume of only 240 L. Values were corroborated with standard measurement techniques demonstrating good agreement. A QCM was then incorporated into a microfluidic glass chip system to measure the square root of the viscosity-density product of RTILs.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

phd

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

Nottingham Trent University

Year dc:date.issued

2010

Author dc:creator

• Doy, N

Language dc:language

en