Solvation properties of ionic liquid mixtures

Ionic liquids (ILs) are salts with low melting points, often resulting in a liquid state at room temperature. ILs are regarded as highly tailorable designer solvents with many potential applications, such as in organic synthesis, energy storage devices and as solvents for biological molecules. However, for many applications the use of ILs is limited due to their cost and viscosity. One approach used to address this is combining ILs with molecular solvents. However, currently there is insufficient knowledge about the interaction of these IL-molecular solvents with solutes and interfaces, particularly regarding which ions or molecular solvent molecules are involved in solvating various solutes. This thesis expands our understanding and provides insight into the tools available to investigate solvent behaviour of ionic liquids at a molecular level using both experiments and computational simulations.