Probing ionic liquid electrolyte structure via the glassy state by dynamic nuclear polarization NMR spectroscopy

Dynamic nuclear polarization (DNP)-enhanced solid-state NMR spectroscopy has been used to study an ionic liquid salt solution (N-methyl-N-propyl-pyrrolidinium bis(fluorosulfonyl)imide, C3mpyrFSI, containing 1.0 m lithium bis(fluorosulfonyl)imide, 6LiFSI) in its glassy state at a temperature of 92 K. The incorporation of a biradical to enable DNP signal enhancement allowed the proximities of the lithium to the individual carbon sites on the pyrrolidinium cation to be probed using a 13C-6Li REDOR pulse sequence. Distributions in Li-C distances were extracted and converted into a 3D map of the locations of the Li+ relative to the C3mpyr that shows remarkably good agreement with a liquid-phase molecular dynamics simulation.