New experimental evidence supporting the mesoscopic segregation model in room temperature ionic liquids

The existence of a high degree of order over the mesoscopic spatial scale in room temperature ionic liquids is one of their most intriguing properties. Recently the possibility that such a feature, that is witnessed by the occurrence of peculiar low Q diffraction features, reflects nm-scale structural organization has been questioned on the basis of both experimental and computational studies. In this contribution we discuss these studies and present novel experimental evidence that confirm the existence of nm-scale spatial heterogeneities due to the segregation of apolar moieties dispersed in a polar network. The consequence of this scenario is that when the chain polarity gets closer to that of the charged head, the structural heterogeneities are no longer observed.