(Invited) Diffusion Control of Metal Ions Close to Electrode in Ionic Liquid -Effect of Local Structure of Ionic Liquid-
Authors: Imanishi Akihito 
Published: July 2021

Ionic liquids (ILs) have attracted keen attention due to its applicability to various kinds of electrochemical devices. However, we still lack enough knowledge of the interface structure and spatial distribution of chemical species during the electrochemical processes. In our previous study, we succeeded in the observation of the spatial distribution of Ag+ ions in ionic liquid solution close to the electrode under the applied potential using scanning electrochemical photoelectron spectroscopy (Scanning EC-PES) we originally developed. Interestingly, the diffusion layer where the concentration of metal ions is quite small (We named this region as “depletion layer”) was formed close to the electrode in a wide region. By a numerical simulation, we revealed that the metal ions diffused by the hopping-like mechanism, in which the apparent diffusion coefficient increased with increasing of the concentration of 'holes' (vacancies formed between IL molecules) acting as hopping sites.

On the other hand, it can be anticipated that the local structure of ILs can be systematically controlled by changing of IL species (e.g. the alkyl chain length of imidazole cation, shape and size of anion), additive ions and/or temperature of solution. By using these techniques for controlling the local structure of ILs, we can strictly control the diffusion behavior of metal ions close to the electrode. In other words, we will be able to propose a new strategy for controlling the diffusion behavior of solutes in ionic liquid solutions close to the electrode. In this study, we investigated the factors for controlling the diffusion behavior of metal ion in IL electrolyte based on our proposing diffusion model, and revealed that the behavior of metal ions can be controlled by some factors.

We investigated the additive effect using Li+ ion. In the case of the ~200 mM Ag+/BMI-TFSA((1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl) amide) solution, the large depletion layer was formed close to the electrode, whereas the depletion layer was decreased when ~100 mM Li+ (as an electrochemically inactive additive) was added to the solution. This result indicates that the hopping-like diffusion was suppressed by the addition of the Li+ ion which efficiently occupied the holes (hopping sites) (Note that the depletion layer was formed by the fast hopping-like diffusion mechanism). On the other hand, when we added the excessive amount of additive (~500 mM Li+) to BMI-TFSA solution, a large depletion layer was formed again, indicating that the hopping diffusion was enhanced. This is due to that some Ag+ ions are drive out of the polar domain, and moved to the non-polar domain where the activation energy of hopping diffusion is relatively small. On the other hand, we carried out a similar experiment using HMI-TFSA instead of BMI-TFSA. We found that the hopping diffusion of Ag+ ion is enhanced compared with that in BMI-TFSA. This could also be explained by the local domain effect of ionic liquid. These results indicate that we can control the diffusion behavior of metal ions by adjusting the local structure of ionic liquid.