Molecular dynamics of supercooled ionic liquids studied by light scattering and dielectric spectroscopy

We investigate molecular dynamics of two supercooled room temperature ionic liquids (RTILs) above of their glass transition temperature by means of dynamic light scattering and broadband dielectric spectroscopy from nanoseconds up to ≈105s. We show that a direct comparison of the raw data of these two techniques allows us to identify the reorientation of ions in the dielectric data, giving experimental evidence to a very recently proposed model of Gainaru et al. [1], stating that the conductivity process in ionic liquids takes place through a reorientational step of ions escaping their cage formed by surrounding counterions. Within this approach we can also understand the apparent decoupling of time constants from dielectric spectroscopy and light scattering, often found in ionic liquids, in a very natural way. Furthermore, as a consequence of knowing the reorientational part of the dielectric spectrum, we are able to show that two more processes contribute to these spectra, which are due to electrode polarization effects. The relative position of all three contributions vary among the systems and may overshadow each other, thus complicating the data analysis and favor misinterpretations.