Anion and ionic liquid effects on ionogel phases formation

Geminal organic salts have been recently introduced as the third generation of ionic liquids.1 Like their monocationic precursors they generally show high thermal stability and low corrosiveness, as well as high polarity and structural order degree.2 All these features make them good candidates to be used in the formation of conductive gel phases, that afterwards may find application as organized reaction media or in the preparation of dye sensitized solar cells.3 In this context, we have recently synthesized some task specific geminal organic salts and investigated their behaviour as gelators. The obtained salts were able to gel ionic liquid solutions. In order to have information about the opacity and the size of the aggregates characterizing the gel phases, UV-vis, resonance light scattering and SEM measurements were carried out. The whole of collected data shed light on the role played by the different nature of the anion in the ionogels formation and the relationship between the ionogelator and the ionic liquid structure.