Minimizing the electrosorption of water from humid ionic liquids on electrodes
File(s)
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
In supercapacitors based on ionic liquid electrolytes, small amounts of absorbed water could potentially reduce the electrochemical window of electrolytes and cause performance degradation. The same would take place if ionic liquids are used as solvents for electrocatalysis involving the dissolved molecular species. In this work, we carry out molecular dynamics simulations, with gold and carbon electrodes in typical ionic liquids, hydrophobic and hydrophilic, to study electrosorption of water. We investigate the effects of hydrophobicity/hydrophilicity of ionic liquids and electrodes on interfacial distribution of ions and electrosorbed water. Results reveal that using hydrophilic ionic liquids would help to keep water molecules away from the negatively charged electrodes, even at large electrode polarizations. This conclusion is supported by electrochemical cyclic voltammetry measurements on gold and carbon electrodes in contact with humid ionic liquids. Thereby, our findings suggest potential mechanisms for protection of electrodes from water electrosorption.
Date Issued
2018-12-04
Date Acceptance
2018-11-16
Citation
Nature Communications, 2018, 9 (1)
ISSN
2041-1723
Publisher
Nature Research (part of Springer Nature)
Journal / Book Title
Nature Communications
Volume
9
Issue
1
Copyright Statement
© 2018 The Author(s). This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Identifier
http://gateway.webofknowledge.com/gateway/Gateway.cgi?GWVersion=2&SrcApp=PARTNER_APP&SrcAuth=LinksAMR&KeyUT=WOS:000452043100001&DestLinkType=FullRecord&DestApp=ALL_WOS&UsrCustomerID=1ba7043ffcc86c417c072aa74d649202
Subjects
Science & Technology
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Science & Technology - Other Topics
MOLECULAR-DYNAMICS SIMULATION
ELECTRICAL DOUBLE-LAYER
FORCE-FIELD
ENERGY-STORAGE
CARBON
MECHANISMS
INTERFACE
EFFICIENT
BEHAVIOR
SURFACE
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
5222
Date Publish Online
2018-12-04