Ricerc@Sapienza

Deep eutectic solvents (DESs) are innovative materials that ruled the research about new green media in the last two decades. Among them, metal-based deep eutectic solvents (MDESs) are formed by a mixture of a hydrogen bond donor (HBD) with a metal salt. In particular, those formed by choline chloride (ChCl) or urea with halide metal salts have shown promising results for what concerns their employment in a wide range of applications, such as electrolytes for electrochemical devices or solvents for catalysis, electrodepositions, chemical extractions and analysis. However, the structural properties that are at the base of the unique characteristics of these new media are still unknown for many of them. For these reasons, the purpose of this project is to study the structural arrangement of these new materials by means of a combined approach between X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. Since the peculiar chemical-physical properties of these solvents seem to be enhanced upon the introduction of additional water, particular attention will be devoted to the study of their structural modifications upon water addition. Our aim is to trace a clear relationship between the microscopic structural arrangement of these new innovative materials and their unique macroscopic physical-chemical properties, hoping that this will help to find the optimum experimental conditions and favor the promotion of these more sustainable processes targeting such important technological sectors.