Roskilde University

Ionic liquids form the basis of the research conducted by the SMART Project PhD student hosted at Roskilde University. Discover more about the student and his research at RUC on this page.  

Structure of Room Temperature Ionic Liquids with Lithium - Peter A. Knudsen

There is a growing interest in room temperature ionic liquids (RTILs), because they can be designed with different properties such as low flammability, low vapour pressure, and high ionic conductivity. These are beneficial properties which makes RTILs more safe to use and they are for example promising candidates as electrolytes in lithium batteries which would make the batteries more stable.

Peter finished his masters degree in mathematics and physics from the Department of Science and Environment at Roskilde University in 2019. The same year he started his PhD position under the supervision of professor Kristine Niss and with the assistance of lector Nicholas Bailey.
The aim of Peter's PhD project is to increase our understanding and knowledge about the structure of RTILs. More specifically what features of the the cations and anions lead to the observed structures and how lithium ions alter that structure.
This will be done with molecular dynamics simulations of different coarse-grained models with varying amount of details.
 - The first model will simply contain point particles representing charged atoms.
 - The second model contains simple molecules and lithium ions.
 - The third model will be based on experimental structural data.