In spite of their enormous applications as alternative energy storage devices and lubricants, room-temperature ionic liquids (ILs) still pose many challenges from a pure scientific viewpoint. We develop an IL microscopic theory in terms of ionic clusters, which describes the IL behavior close to charged interfaces. The full structure factor of finite-size clusters is considered and allows us to retain fine and essential details of the system as a whole. Beside the reduction in the screening, it is shown that ionic clusters cause the charge density to oscillate near charged boundaries, with alternating ion-size thick layers, in agreement with experiments. We distinguish between short-range oscillations that persist for a few ionic layers close to the boundary, as opposed to long-range damped oscillations that hold throughout the bulk. The former can be captured by finite-size ion pairs, while the latter is associated with larger clusters with a pronounced quadrupole (or higher) moment. The long-wavelength limit of our theory recovers the well-known Bazant-Storey-Kornyshev (BSK) equation in the linear regime, and elucidates the microscopic origin of the BSK phenomenological parameters.

中文翻译：

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离子液体中的电荷振荡：微观簇模型。

尽管室温离子液体（ILs）作为替代性储能设备和润滑剂有着巨大的应用，但从纯科学的角度来看，它们仍然构成了许多挑战。我们根据离子簇发展了一种IL微观理论，该理论描述了靠近带电界面的IL行为。考虑了有限大小群集的完整结构因子，使我们能够保留整个系统的精细和必要细节。除了减少筛选之外，还表明与实验相符，离子簇导致电荷密度在带电边界附近振荡，并具有交替的离子大小的厚层。我们区分了在边界附近几个离子层持续存在的短程振荡，与在整个主体中保持的长程阻尼振荡相反。前者可以被有限尺寸的离子对捕获，而后者则与具有明显四极矩（或更高矩）矩的较大簇相关。我们理论的长波极限在线性状态下恢复了众所周知的Bazant-Storey-Kornyshev（BSK）方程，并阐明了BSK现象学参数的微观起源。