Effects of Surface Transition and Adsorption on Ionic Liquid Capacitors

Room-temperature ionic liquids (RTILs) are synthetic electrolytes with electrochemical stability superior to that of conventional aqueous-based electrolytes, allowing a significantly enlarged electrochemical window for application as capacitors. In this study, we propose a variant of an existing RTIL model for solvent-free RTILs, accounting for both ion-ion correlations and nonelectrostatic interactions. Using this model, we explore the phenomenon of spontaneous surface charge separation in RTIL capacitors and find that this transition is a common feature for realistic choices of the model parameters in most RTILs. In addition, we investigate the effects of asymmetric preferential ion adsorption on this charge separation transition and find that proximity of the transition in this case can result in greatly enhanced energy storage. Our work suggests that differential chemical treatment of electrodes can be a simple and useful means for optimizing energy storage in RTIL capacitors.