Grant: Alliance Grants

Scientific evidence now irrefutably confirms that global warming is occurring at an alarming rate, likely even faster than previously anticipated. Great efforts are currently made in the development of new energy materials to wean our energy consumption from our fossil fuel dependency. In the quest for efficient materials to fight against energy consumption and get effective energy storage devices, the well-established Lithium-ion batteries reveal some drawbacks including energy density, safety, and long-life reuse. Organic Ionic Plastic Crystals (OIPCs) recently attracted a lot of interest in this field as materials showing great promise for battery applications. The industrial partner is developing this new class of materials (patent 2022). However, the main factors that yield their specific behavior are not fully understood. Such comprehension is critical to propose new performing materials developed from OIPC, to be used in solid-state battery electrolytes. For this, molecular simulation is particularly well suited. This project is thus a partnership between a company which possesses a great amount of experimental data of OIPCs, and Soldera's lab possessing the expertise in simulations. The proposed project is thus aimed at capturing the role of different constituents in OIPC systems, to explain their high conductivity.