Adding salt to expand voltage window of humid ionic liquids

• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-19469-3
• Publication Date: 2020-11-16T11:04:49Z
• Authors: Ming Chen; Jiedu Wu; Ting Ye; Jinyu Ye; Chang Zhao; Sheng Bi; Jiawei Yan; Bingwei Mao; Guang Feng
• Keywords: Chemical Physics (physics.chem-ph); Condensed Matter - Materials Science; Science; Q; Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci); FOS: Physical sciences; Physics - Applied Physics; Applied Physics (physics.app-ph); 01 natural sciences; Article; 0104 chemical sciences; Physics - Chemical Physics

Humid hydrophobic ionic liquids, widely used as electrolytes, have narrowed electrochemical windows, because their water, absorbed on the electrode surface, gets involved in electrolysis. In this work, we performed molecular dynamics simulations to explore effects of adding Li-salt humid liquids water adsorbed surface. Results reveal that most molecules are pushed away from both cathode and anode, by salt. The remained is almost bound with Li+, which has significantly lowered activity. Li+-bonding re-arrangement surface-adsorbed facilitate inhibition electrolysis, thus prevent reduction windows liquids. This finding testified cyclic voltammetry measurements where salt-in-humid exhibit enhanced windows. Our work provides underlying mechanism a simple but practical approach for protection performance degradation.