Liquid structure of a choline chloride-water natural deep eutectic solvent: A molecular dynamics characterization

2021

The liquid structure of a representative of the first water-in-salt (WiS) Natural Deep Eutectic Solvents (NADES), hereinafter indicated as aquoline, a mixture of choline chloride (ChCl) and water with molar ratio 1:3.33, is ex- plored at ambient conditions. Using Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulation tools, we extract structural informa- tion at atomistic level on the nature of inter-correlations between the different moieties. Despite being a very fluid liquid, with much lower viscosity than other common ChCl-based DES, aquoline turns out to be very struc- tured. Computed X-ray and neutron weighted scattering patterns (the latter also on selectively deuterated mix- tures) highlight the existe…