Unravelling the Role of the Compressed Gas on Melting Point of Liquid Confined in Nanospace

Abstract

Phase behaviors of the liquids in nanospaces are of particular interest to understand the thermodynamics of the liquid on the nanoscale and for their applications that involve the confined systems. However, in many cases, the inconsistent observations of melting point variation for confined liquids are often revealed by different groups. Ionic liquids are a special kind of liquid. Here, by using the merits of the nonvolatile nature of ionic liquids, we realized the encapsulation of ionic liquids inside of mesopores silica oxide nanoparticles with a complete removal of compressed gas under high-vacuum condition; the completely confined ionic liquid formed a crystalline-like phase. It was found that compressed gas plays an important role in changing the melting point of the confined ionic liquid.

Keywords: compressed gas; ionic liquid; melting point; nanoconfinement; phases transition.