Ionic Liquids
An ionic liquid is a salt that is in liquid form at room temperature. Because it is in liquid form, it can be thought of as a solution that is composed entirely of ions (unlike a typical electrolyte which is a solution with salt ions dissolved into it). Ionic fluids have beneficial properties that make them extremely promising. They are non corrosive, non flammable, and they have very low vapor pressure.
Our aim is to use nanopores to probe electric properties of ionic liquids such as conductivity, ability to screen electric charge, and stability. Ionic liquids are seen by many labs around the world to have promise in the world of battery technology; Several projects in our lab are geared toward realizing this.
Preliminary results show that ILs have remarkable charge screening compared to typical salts. This is suspected to be due to the comparative size of the IL ions to our nanopores. Theoretical modeling is currently underway to describe this phenomenon in detail.
