Room-temperature ionic liquid battery electrolytes

Room-temperature molten salts possess a number of unique properties that make them ideal battery electrolytes. In particular, they are nonflammable, nonvolatile and chemically inert, and they display wide electrochemical windows, high inherent conductivities and wide thermal operating ranges. Although these ionic liquids have excellent characteristics, the chemical and electrochemical properties of desirable battery electrode materials are not well understood in these electrolytes. The authors research has focused on rechargeable electrodes and has included work on metallic lithium and sodium anodes in buffered neutral chloroaluminate melts, graphite-intercalation electrodes in neutral chloroaluminate and nonchloroaluminate melts and silane-imidazole polymeric cathodes in acidic chloroaluminate melts. This paper provides an overview of their research in these areas.