Water-induced mica/ionic liquid interfacial nanostructure switches revealed by AFM.

Glovebox-AFM-based force curve measurements have been employed to investigate the effect of controlled small amounts of water on the interfacial structure of mica/a pyrrolidinium-based ionic liquid. A close examination reveals that with the increase of water content, the long-range monotonic force, which is beyond the region of the short-range oscillatory structure, switches from van der Waals attraction-dominated force to double layer repulsion-dominated force.