The evaporation/decomposition behavior of the imidazolium ionic liquid 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium hexafluorophosphate (BMImPF(6)) was investigated in the overall temperature range 425-551 K by means of the molecular effusion -based techniques Knudsen effusion mass loss (KEML) and Knudsen effusion mass spectrometry (KEMS), using effusion orifices of different size (from 0.2 to 3 mm in diameter). Specific effusion fluxes measured by KEML were found to depend markedly on the orifice size, suggesting the occurrence of a kinetically delayed evaporation/decomposition process. KEMS experiments revealed that other species are present in the vapor phase besides the intact ion pair BMImPF(6)(g) produced by the simple evaporation BMImPF(6)(1) = BMImPF(6)(g), with relative abundances depending on the orifice size-the larger the orifice, the larger the contribution of the BMImPF(6)(g) species. By combining KEML and KEMS results, the conclusion is drawn that in the investigated temperature range, when small effusion orifices are used, a significant part of the mass loss/volatility of BMImPF6 is due to molecular products formed by decomposition/dissociation processes rather than to evaporated intact ion pairs. Additional experiments performed by nonisothermal thermogravimetry-differential thermal analysis (TG-DTA) further support the evidence of simultaneous evaporation/decomposition, although the conventional decomposition temperature derived from TG curves is much higher than the temperatures covered in effusion experiments. Partial pressures of the BMImPF(6)(g) species were derived from KEMS spectra and analyzed by second- and third-law methods giving a value of Delta H-evap(298K)degrees = 145.3 +/- 2.9 kJmol(-1) for the standard evaporation enthalpy of BMImPF(6). A comparison is done with the behavior of the 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium bis(trifluoromethyl)sulfonylimide (BMImNTf(2)) ionic liquid.