The Interpretation of Diffraction Patterns of Two Prototypical Protic Ionic Liquids: a Challenging Task for Classical Molecular Dynamics Simulations

In this study, we discuss the performance of classical molecular dynamics in predicting the experimental X-ray diffraction patterns of liquid ethylammonium nitrate (one of the simplest protic room-temperature ionic liquid showing amphiphilic behavior) and of its hydroxy derivative (2-ethanolammonium nitrate, 2-HOEAN). Newly recorded energy-dispersive X-ray diffraction structure factors are compared with the corresponding quantities extracted from molecular dynamics simulations. Other useful theoretical and experimental indicators are used as a probe of the local structure of the title ionic liquids. We shall show that the use of a general purpose, two-body terms only, force field, such as OPLS/AA is able to describe most of the structural experimental data. However, we shall also point out that an improved description of some key structural features observed in the X-ray radial distribution function, can be obtained very easily by adding a general three-body potential energy term instead of changing the two-body potential parameters, in order to optimize the agreement with experimental data. This three-body term turns out to be naturally able to describe the complex polarization effects due to hydrogen bonding without requiring a quanto-mechanical treatment or a polarizable force field. In addition the present model turns out to be able to account for the presence of a low-Q peak in the scattering patterns of EAN, which has been commonly interpreted as a manifestation of the amphiphilic nature of this compound.