Highly concentrated electrolytes
Research Project, 2015
– 2019
Non-aqueous electrolytes are today employed in technological applications, often at high concentrations. During 2013 even more concentrated electrolytes were launched; >>1 M, up to ~7 M. In these very unique materials the dissolved ions cannot any longer acquire their standard preferred solvation shell, which in turn leads to quite striking different material properties in terms of conductivities, stabilities, corrosiveness etc. Here we aim to address the very basic science and fundamental nature of highly concentrated electrolyte materials via a combined experimental and computational approach, for a wide variety of salts and solvents (the latter including also ionic liquids) and as functions of concentration and temperature. The main basic science targets: i)Properly address the local (cation) coordination in terms of solvation shell and coordination number via vibrational spectroscopy (IR and Raman) and DFT modelling, ii) Study and quantify the intriguing decoupling of conductivity and viscosity to increase the understanding of the altered conduction mechanism, iii) Study features like interfacial resistance, degradation and corrosiveness. These observations will all be connected with major physical concepts of liquids such as fragility, cooperativity, relaxation and diffusion. In all we want to connect the observed properties to the underlying phenomena and concepts and the materials´ composition into practically applicable guidelines for materials optimisation.
Participants
Patrik Johansson (contact)
Condensed Matter Physics
Funding
Swedish Energy Agency
Project ID: 39909-1
Funding Chalmers participation during 2015–2019