Project description
Seeing electrolytes under a new light
Electrolytes are materials which transport ionic charge. Essential for a number of bodily functions, they are everywhere – our blood, sweat and urine. Animals and plants are also made up of electrolytes, as are the oceans. Also, batteries and fuel cells incorporate electrolytes as a central and essential component. The EU-funded ELECTROLYTE project will explore and understand molecular interactions in complex and high-concentration electrolytes. It will draw on theories and predictions from far-separated disciplines of Coulomb physics, ionic liquid chemistry, soft matter, and the biology of halophiles. The findings will shed new light on innovating electrolyte materials for future technologies.
Objective
Electrolytes fill our natural environment and are crucial to many areas of modern technology. Animals and plants are made up of electrolyte and our oceans are enormous reservoirs of electrolyte covering 2/3 of the surface of the Earth. Energy storage and conversion technologies, such as batteries and fuel cells, incorporate electrolyte as a central and essential ingredient. Despite this enormous ubiquity and importance of electrolytes, these fluids are often relegated to the ‘background’, considered simply as a solvating environment or conduits for charge transfer, sufficiently well defined by a few general parameters. Recently, a new perspective has begun to emerge: of electrolytes as a complex, central player: A vast library of different chemistries are being discovered including molecular ions, eutectic mixtures, self-assembling liquid salts, and oligomeric solvents. This diversity brings an unexplored jungle of nano-architectures and dynamic heterogeneities, relevant across many orders of magnitude in time and space.
The overall vision of the ELECTROLYTE project is to explore and understand molecular interactions in complex and high-concentration electrolytes. The philosophy and methodology of the project involves drawing on theories and predictions from far-separated disciplines of Coulomb physics, ionic liquid chemistry, soft matter, and the biology of halophiles and electric fish. From these foundations, a series of hypotheses will be tested through experimental investigations of the structure, dynamics, electrochemical, mechanical and confinement properties of a wide range of electrolytic materials. This will lead to deep insight into the properties of concentrated electrolytes, and demonstrations of radically new electrolytic materials with properties outside of what is currently possible. Ultimately, the project will bring new mindsets for understanding and innovating electrolyte materials for future technologies.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
- social sciencespolitical sciencespolitical transitionsrevolutions
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringenergy and fuels
- humanitiesphilosophy, ethics and religionphilosophy
You need to log in or register to use this function
We are sorry... an unexpected error occurred during execution.
You need to be authenticated. Your session might have expired.
Thank you for your feedback. You will soon receive an email to confirm the submission. If you have selected to be notified about the reporting status, you will also be contacted when the reporting status will change.
Keywords
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
ERC-COG - Consolidator GrantHost institution
OX1 2JD Oxford
United Kingdom