Molecular beam deposition of nanoscale ionic liquids in ultrahigh vacuum.

We propose a new approach to nanoscience and technology for ionic liquids (ILs): molecular beam deposition of IL in ultrahigh vacuum by using a continuous wave infrared (CW-IR) laser deposition technique. This approach has made it possible to prepare a variety of "nano-IL" with the given composition on the substrate: a nanodroplet, on one hand, the volume of which goes down to 1 aL and, on the other hand, an ultrathin film with a thickness to several 100 nm or less. The result of fractional distillation of a binary mixture of ILs, investigated by nuclear magnetic resonance as well as electrospray ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry, indicates that this deposition process is based on the thermal evaporation of ILs, and thus this process also can be used as a new purification method of ILs in vacuum. Furthermore, the fabrication of binary mixture droplets of two ILs on the substrate by alternating deposition of two ILs was demonstrated; the homogeneity of the composition was confirmed even for one single droplet by high-spatial-resolution Raman spectroscopy.