# Patricia Hunt (chemist)

Patricia Anne Hunt is a New Zealand chemist, and is a full professor at Victoria University of Wellington, specialising in ionic bonds in liquids. In 2024 Hunt was awarded one of two New Zealand Mana Tūārangi Distinguished Researcher Fellowships by the Royal Society Te Apārangi.

## Academic career

Hunt completed a Bachelor of Science, a Master of Science in physics and chemistry, a Bachelor of Arts in politics and philosophy, and a PhD titled Jahn-Teller Distortions in Molecules Containing Group 15 Elements at the University of Auckland. Hunt then undertook postdoctoral research at King's College London and Cambridge University. She was awarded a UK Royal Society University Research Fellowship, which she used to work at Imperial College London. She was made Professor of Theoretical and Computational Chemistry at Imperial in 2018, and moved to Victoria University of Wellington in 2020.
Hunt researches the structure and chemical bonds in solvents and ionic liquids. In 2022 she received a Marsden grant to model the structure of ionic liquids.
Hunt is an associate investigator in the MacDiarmid Institute for Advance Materials and Nanotechnology.

## Honours and awards

In 2011 Hunt received a President's Award for Excellence in Teaching at Imperial, and in 2015 she was awarded a prize for her research supervision. In November 2024 the Royal Society Te Apārangi awarded Hunt one of two inaugural New Zealand Mana Tūārangi Distinguished Researcher Fellowships. The fellowship was awarded for work "to use quantum chemical modelling to investigate ionic liquid micro-propulsion systems for mini satellites".

## Selected works

* Ian S. Metcalfe; Greg A. Mutch; Evangelos I. Papaioannou; et al. (19 July 2024). "Separation and concentration of CO2 from air using a humidity-driven molten-carbonate membrane" (PDF). Nature Energy. doi:10.1038/S41560-024-01588-6. ISSN 2058-7546. Wikidata Q131195798.
* Claire R Ashworth; Richard P Matthews; Tom Welton; Patricia A Hunt (22 June 2016). "Doubly ionic hydrogen bond interactions within the choline chloride-urea deep eutectic solvent". Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics. 18 (27): 18145–18160. doi:10.1039/C6CP02815B. ISSN 1463-9076. PMID 27328990. Wikidata Q87721253.
* Patricia A Hunt; Claire R Ashworth; Richard P Matthews (1 March 2015). "Hydrogen bonding in ionic liquids". Chemical Society Reviews. 44 (5): 1257–1288. doi:10.1039/C4CS00278D. ISSN 0306-0012. PMID 25582457. Wikidata Q38315930.
* Richard P. Matthews; Tom Welton; Patricia A. Hunt (2014). "Competitive pi interactions and hydrogen bonding within imidazolium ionic liquids". Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics. 16 (7): 3238. doi:10.1039/C3CP54672A. ISSN 1463-9076. PMID 24407103. Wikidata Q57390151.
* Heiko Niedermeyer; Jason P Hallett; Ignacio J Villar-Garcia; Patricia A Hunt; Thomas Welton (1 December 2012). "Mixtures of ionic liquids". Chemical Society Reviews. 41 (23): 7780–7802. doi:10.1039/C2CS35177C. ISSN 0306-0012. PMID 22890419. Wikidata Q38034415.
* M A Ab Rani; A Brant; L Crowhurst; et al. (22 August 2011). "Understanding the polarity of ionic liquids". Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics. 13 (37): 16831–16840. doi:10.1039/C1CP21262A. ISSN 1463-9076. PMID 21858359. Wikidata Q57390177.
* Patricia A Hunt (23 March 2007). "Why does a reduction in hydrogen bonding lead to an increase in viscosity for the 1-butyl-2,3-dimethyl-imidazolium-based ionic liquids?". The Journal of Physical Chemistry B. 111 (18): 4844–4853. doi:10.1021/JP067182P. ISSN 1520-6106. PMID 17388550. Wikidata Q80047930.
* Patricia A. Hunt; Barbara Kirchner; Tom Welton (6 September 2006). "Characterising the Electronic Structure of Ionic Liquids: An Examination of the 1-Butyl-3-Methylimidazolium Chloride Ion Pair". Chemistry: A European Journal. 12 (26): 6762–6775. doi:10.1002/CHEM.200600103. ISSN 0947-6539. PMID 16807969. Wikidata Q57390232.