The liquid structure of a new electrolyte for aluminium batteries – part 2

Aluminium ion batteries are a nascent technology that could potentially complement conventional lithium-ion batteries. Aluminium is inexpensive, easily available world-wide, and can carry triple charge (Al3+), in contrast to lithium (Li+). Chloroaluminate ionic liquids (state-of-the-art in Al-electrolytes) suffer from (i) relatively high viscosity, (ii) expensive organic cations and (iii) very high corrosivity. Recently, we have published on a new family of Al-ILs that overcome all these issues, albeit - speciation of aluminium in these new media is uncertain. Here, we propose to study the liquid structure of the Al-SIL electrolyte, to gain better understanding of the actual species present, and inform its optimisation for electrochemical studies, ongoing in the Matuszek group. As a comparator, we propose to study an analogous gallium formulation, which offers an interesting comparator as a heavier Group 13 metal, and is of interest in its own right, as a strong Lewis acidic catalyst