Molecular Dynamics Simulations of the Ionic Liquid 1-n-Butyl-3-Methylimidazolium Chloride and Its Binary Mixtures with Ethanol.

Room temperature ionic liquids (ILs) of the imidazolium family have attracted much attention during the past decade for their capability to dissolve biomass. Besides experimental work, numerous compuational studies have been concerned with the physical properties of both neat ILs and their interactions with different solutes, in particular, carbohydrates. Many classical force fields designed specifically for ILs have been found to yield viscosities that are too high for the liquid state, which has been attributed to the fact that the effective charge densities are too high due to the lack of electronic polarizability. One solution to this problem has been uniform scaling of the partial charges by a scale factor in the range 0.6-0.9, depending on model. This procedure has been shown to improve the viscosity of the models, and also to positively affect other properties, such as diffusion constants and ionic conductivity. However, less attention has been paid to how this affects the overall thermodynamics of the system, and the problems it might create when the IL models are combined with other force fields (e.g., for solutes). In the present work, we employ three widely used IL force fields to simulate 1-n-butyl-3-methyl-imidazolium chloride in both the crystal and the liquid state, as well as its binary mixture with ethanol. Two approaches are used: one in which the ionic charge is retained at its full integer value and one in which the partial charges are uniformly reduced to 85%. We investigate and calculate crystal and liquid structures, molar heat capacities, heats of fusion, self-diffusion constants, ionic conductivity, and viscosity for the neat IL, and ethanol activity as a function of ethanol concentration for the binary mixture. We show that properties of the crystal are less affected by charge scaling compared to the liquid. In the liquid state, transport properties of the neat IL are generally improved by scaling, whereas values for the heat of fusion are unaffected, and results for the heat capacity are ambiguous. Neither full nor reduced charges could reproduce experimental ethanol activities for the whole range of compositions.