Ab initio studies on [bmim] [PF < inf > 6 < /inf > ]-CO < inf > 2 < /inf > mixture and CO < inf > 2 < /inf > clusters

Abstract

Ab initio molecular dynamics studies have been carried out on the room temperature ionic liquid, 1, n-butyl,3-methylimidazolium hexafluorophosphate ([bmim][PF6]) and supercritical carbon dioxide mixture at room temperature and experimental density. Partial radial distribution functions (RDF) for different sites have been computed to see the organization of CO 2 molecules around the ionic liquid. Several partial RDFs around the carbon atom of CO2 molecule are compared to find out that the CO 2 has specific interaction with a carbon atom present in the imidazolium ring. The CO2 is also found to be very well organized around the terminal carbon atom of the butyl chain. The partial RDFs for the oxygen atoms around oxygen and carbon atoms of the CO2 suggests that there is very good organization of CO2 molecules around themselves even in the [bmim] [PF6] - CO2 mixture. The instantaneous quadrupole moment tensor has been calculated for the anion and the cation. The ensemble average of diagonal components of quadrupole moment tensor of the cation have finite values, whereas the off-diagonal components of the cation and both the diagonal and off-diagonal components of the anion have the value of zero with a large standard deviation. The CPMD studies performed on CO 2 clusters reveals the greater tendency of the clusters with more CO2 units, to deviate from the linear geometry. © Indian Academy of Sciences.