Introduction of ionic liquid to vacuum conditions for development of material productions and analyses

Abstract

Room temperature ionic liquid (RTIL) possessing negligible vapor pressure can be put in a vacuum chamber without vaporization. This fact enables to make wet condition even under vacuum condition although it is absolute common sense that vacuum conditions must be dry world. Based on this attracting fact, we have attempted to introduce RTILs to several kinds of instruments, which need to keep vacuum condition in their sample chamber for analyses and material productions. Introduction of RTIL to analyses requiring vacuum conditions including electron microscopy and energy dispersed X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy allows us to observe samples with wet condition and chemical reactions and to analyze these samples. Metal sputtering and quantum beam instruments are exploitable for production of metal nanoparticles. The resulting metal nanoparticles are quite stable and they keep their electrocatalytic activities. © The Electrochemical Society of Japan All rights reserved.