Magnitude of Dynamically Correlated Molecules as an Indicator for a Dynamical Crossover in Ionic Liquids

Abstract

In this work, we show how the structure and intermolecular interactions affect the dynamic heterogeneity of aprotic ionic liquids. Using calorimetric data for 30 ionic samples, we examine the influence of the strength of van der Waals and Coulombic interactions on dynamic heterogeneity. We show that the dynamic length scale of spatially heterogeneous dynamics decreases significantly with decreasing intermolecular distances. Additionally, we assume that the magnitude of the number of dynamically correlated molecules at the liquid−glass transition temperature can be treated as an indicator for a dynamical crossover.