Ionic liquids (ILs) – salts that are liquid at temperatures below 100°C – have gained big popularity over the past years and have become products of industrial interest, instead of just being lab curiosities. Ionic Liquids show interesting combination of physical and chemical properties, such as tunable viscosity and conductivity, chemical and thermal stability as well as large electrochemical windows and incombustibility at temperatures below their decomposition point. Especially the last two allows their use as safe electrolytes in batteries, supercapacitors and other energy devices.^[1-4]

Figure 1: Temperature-dependent viscosity of IL-mixtures.

One of the main disadvantages of ILs - their high viscosity - can be overcome by using mixtures (Figure 1). In this talk we will present our latest results and developments in the field of ionic liquid based electrolytes for batteries and supercapacitors. In the latter cycling stability over 8 000 000 cycles has been achieved. The use of mixtures of ionic liquids and suitable additives in order to enhance performance and safety of zinc - air, aluminum - air and silicon - air batteries will also be discussed.

 

Literature:

[1] M. A. Taige, D. Hilbert, T. J. S. Schubert, Z. Phys. Chem. 226 (2012) 129-139.

[2] D. Aradilla, P. Gentile, V. Ruiz, P. Gómez-Romero, J. Wimberg, B. Iliev, T. Schubert, S. Sadki and G. Bidan, Adv. Nat. Sci.: Nanosci. Nanotechnol., 2015, 6, 015004-015010.

[3] D. Gelman, B. Shvartsev, Y. Ein-Eli, J. Mater. Chem. A 2 (2014) 20237-20242.

[4] M. Kar, B. Winther-Jensen, M. Forsyth, D. R. MacFarlane, Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys.

15 (2013) 7191-7197.