Mesoscopic structural organization in triphilic room temperature ionic liquids

Room temperature ionic liquids are one of the most exciting classes of materials in the last decade. The interest for these low melting, ionic compounds stems from both their technological impact and the stimulating plethora of structural and dynamic peculiarities in the mesoscopic space-time scales. It is nowadays well-established that they are characterised by an enhanced degree of mesoscopic order originating from their inherent amphiphilicity. In this contribution we highlight the existence of a further degree of mesoscopic complexity when dealing with RTILs bearing a medium length fluorous tail: such triphilic materials (they simultaneously contain polar, hydrophobic and fluorophilic moieties that mutually segregate from each other) turn out to be highly structurally compartmentalised at the mesoscopic level, thus paving the way to new smart applications for this new class of RTILs. This journal is © The Royal Society of Chemistry.