Enhancing the capacitive performance of microporous materials with protic ionic liquids

Classical density functional theory (cDFT) is used to investigate the electrosorption of protic ionic liquids in porous electrodes within the framework of a coarse-grained model. The purpose of this study is to clar-ify the capacitive behavior of protic ionic liquids in confined geometry. Previous studies have indicated that thermodynamic properties (e.g., capacitance, phase behavior and ionic conductivity) are influenced by the composition of the acid-base system and show asymmetry between acid dominant versus base dominant compositions. We find that the electric double layer capacitance can be significantly improved by using protic ionic liquids compared to its aprotic counterpart through optimization of the mixture composition (i.e., the ratio of acid to base). We demonstrate the influence of pore size and applied voltage on the capacitance performance of protic ionic liquids and provide insight into microscopic understand-ing of ion and solvent distributions inside micropores.(c) 2022 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

Classical density functional theory (cDFT) is used to investigate the electrosorption behavior of protic ionic liquids in porous electrodes. The study shows that the electric double layer capacitance can be significantly improved by optimizing the composition of the mixture. The research provides insight into the microscopic distribution of ions and solvents inside micropores.