Decrease of droplet size of the reverse microemulsion 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium tetrafluoroborate/Triton X-100/cyclohexane by addition of water

In the present contribution, results concerning the role of small amounts of water in the 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium tetrafluoroborate (bmimBF4)-in-cyclohexane ionic liquid (IL) reverse microemulsions are reported. Dynamic light scattering (DLS) revealed that the size of microemulsion droplets decreased remarkably with increasing water content although water is often used as a polar component to swell reverse microemulsions. It was thus deduced that the number of microemulsion droplets was increased which was confirmed by conductivity measurements. The states of dissolved water were investigated by Fourier transform IR (FTIR) spectroscopic analysis showing that water molecules mainly act as bound water. 1H NMR along with two-dimensional rotating frame nuclear Overhauser effect (NOE) experiments (ROESY) further revealed that water molecules were mainly located in the periphery of the polar core of the microemulsion droplets and behave like a chock being inserted in the palisade layer of the droplet. This increased the curvature of the surfactant film at the IL/cyclohexane interface and thus led to the decrease of the microemulsion droplet size. The order of surfactant molecules arranged in the interface film was increased and thus induced a loss of entropy. Isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC) indicated that an enthalpy increase compensates for the loss of entropy during the process of microstructural transition.