BACKGROUND
Room temperature ionic liquids are a class of salts that are liquid at room temperature consisting exclusively of ions. They are currently one of the most studied solvents because of several unique properties such as negligible volatility, electrochemical stability, low melting point, and high thermal and chemical stability; this makes them highly desirable for electrolytes in electrochemical devices. However, the low ionic conductivity of many ionic liquids at low temperatures represents a bottleneck for applications of these liquids as electrolytes in batteries.
Currently, approach to mitigate this limitation for using ionic liquids is to tune the properties of an ionic liquid by altering functional groups attached to the cation, changing the cationic core, and/or modifying the chemical composition of the anion. This method relies on a large amount of chemical expertise in synthesis and property measurements that is outpaced by the breadth of the chemical space for cations and anions. There is a serious need for tools to address the searching and designing of ionic liquids with properties suited for a given application.
SUMMARY OF TECHNOLOGY
Researchers at OSU have conceived a method to discover high ionic conductivity ionic liquids for use in various applications. These methods can employ machine learning techniques, and the data for model development were acquired from the NIST ILThermo Database. Test data have resulted in ~1,000 new ionic liquids with several ionic liquids possessing ionic conductivity greater than one Siemens per meter (S/m) at room temperature. Additionally, the technology discovered an ionic liquid with ionic conductivity greater than the highest reported in the database. This novel model-based approach can provide much faster advancement in the design and identification of ionic liquids for various electrochemical applications.
POTENTIAL AREAS OF APPLICATION
- Designing and searching
- Identifying unique ionic fluid for energy storage systems and solar cells
MAIN ADVANTAGES
- Tunability of ionic conductivity of the compound discovered
STAGE OF DEVELOPMENT