Interfacial Effects and Charge Carrier Chemistry in Lithium Electrolytes Seminar

Lithium electrolytes that link high ionic conductivities with high lithium transference number are rare, and believed to be essential for functional high power batteries. One effective way to prepare such materials is by engaging an interfacial effect on an oxide surface in order to demobilize the anion in liquid/solid electrolytes. The galvanostatic polarization experiments as well as the influence of surface area, salt concentration and temperature on their outcome will be discussed in details. Furthermore, significance of interfacial effect concept in other ionic devices will be touched upon.  

Rather than just facilitating high performance materials, interfacial effects in liquid/solid electrolytes are a fruitful playground for fundamental understanding of the electrical double layer. A model glyme on muscovite Mica system is in these lines a starting point for tackling the issue of ion-ion correlations in concentrated electrolytes and its effect on the Debye lengths estimated from surface force measurements. Surprisingly, glycol ethers containing 0.2-1M lithium salt prove to have similar interfacial behaviour as pure ionic liquids.

Finally, I will end my talk with the exciting possibility to use solid polymer lithium electrolytes in bilayer graphene gating experiments. Here, the electrolyte plays a vital role in the direct measurement of high lithium diffusion coefficient through quantum Hall effect.