Confining ionic liquids (ILs) with added lithium salt within silica host networks enhances their fragility and improves their conductivity. Overall, conductivity measurements, Raman spectroscopy of the TFSI anion and NMR spectroscopy of the lithium cation show segregative interaction of lithium ions with the SiO₂ host matrix. This implies at IL/SiO₂ interfaces a breakdown of aggregated regions that are found systematically in bulk ILs. Such destructuration due to the interface effect determines the fragility and thus results locally at the interface in short relaxation times, low viscosity, and good ionic conductivity. The “destructuration” of ion pairs or domains makes ILs within ionogels a competitive alternative to existing solid ionic conductors in all-solid devices, such as lithium batteries and supercapacitors.

Hydrogenated graphene edges are assumed to be either armchair, zigzag, or a combination of the two. We show that the zigzag is not the most stable fully hydrogenated edge structure along the $$\langle${}2\overline{1}\overline{1}0$\rangle${}$ direction. Instead hydrogenated Klein and reconstructed Klein based edges are found to be energetically more favorable, with stabilities approaching that of armchair edges. These new structures ``unify'' graphene edge topology, the most stable flat hydrogenated graphene edges always consisting of pairwise bonded C${}_{2}$H${}_{4}$ edge groups, irrespective of the edge orientation. When edge rippling is included, CH${}_{3}$ edge groups are most stable. These new fundamental hydrogen-terminated edges have important implications for graphene edge imaging and spectroscopy, as well as mechanisms for graphene growth, nanotube cutting, and nanoribbon formation and behavior.