- Title
- A comparative AFM study of the interfacial nanostructure in imidazolium or pyrrolidinium ionic liquid electrolytes for zinc electrochemical systems
- Creator
- Begić, Srđan; Li, Hua; Atkin, Rob; Hollenkamp, Anthony F.; Howlett, Patrick C.
- Relation
- ARC.DP120102708 http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/DP120102708
- Relation
- Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics Vol. 18, Issue 42, p. 29337-29347
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1039/c6cp04299f
- Publisher
- Royal Society of Chemistry
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2016
- Description
- The electrochemical systems containing zinc dicyanamide salt (Zn(dca)₂) in both 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium dicyanamide ([C₂mim][dca]) and N-butyl-N-methylpyrrolidinium dicyanamide ([C₄mpyr][dca]) ionic liquids (ILs) have been studied by atomic force microscopy (AFM) on a highly oriented pyrolytic graphite (HOPG) surface under different conditions and applied potentials. The results reveal the following: (1) interfacial layers exist in both ILs, even after the addition of 3 wt% water and 9 mol% Zn(dca)₂ salt. (2) The number of layers is different for the different ILs, with the [C₂mim][dca]-based samples exhibiting a much more limited interfacial structure compared to the [C₄mpyr][dca] at almost all of the tested conditions. (3) For the [C₄mpyr][dca]-based samples, without added zinc salt, the number of detected interfacial layers increases with negative potential. With added zinc, the [C₄mpyr][dca] sample shows about the same number of layers independent of the applied potentials, namely between 5–7. Likewise, for the [C₂mim][dca] samples, with the zinc added the sample shows the same number of layers at the applied potentials, but for this system only 1–2 layers are detected. And (4) the addition of Zn(dca)₂ into the [C₂mim][dca] IL does not cause a large change in the interfacial ordering, whereas the addition of the same salt into the [C₄mpyr][dca] samples is marked by a stark increase in both the number and the consistency of the perceived interfacial layers. These results are significant because they show a marked difference in the interfacial nanostructure between two zinc-based electrochemical systems that were previously shown to have distinctly different electrochemical behaviour, despite their chemical similarity.
- Subject
- solvation layers; sensitized solar cells; nanostructure; salt
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1345275
- Identifier
- uon:29604
- Identifier
- ISSN:1463-9076
- Language
- eng
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