CCI Phase I: NSF Center for Interfacial Ionics

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The NSF Center for Interfacial Ionics (CI2) is supported by the Centers for Chemical Innovation (CCI) Program in the Division of Chemistry. The work in CI2 is in electrochemistry – i.e., the science that underlies the design of batteries, control of corrosion (rusting), production of renewable carbon-neutral hydrogen and liquid fuels, carbon-capture technologies, and the transmission and processing of information in biology (for example, in the nervous system). Although electrochemistry inherently couples the motion of ions (atoms or molecules with positive or negative charge) and electrons, it is typically only the flow of electrons that is measured by experiments (as electrical current). This has resulted in an ‘electron-centric’ conceptual foundation that does not optimally support the design of electrochemical technologies that are limited by how ions move. The NSF CI2 will address this basic-science gap of how ions move across interfaces by building precise platforms to measure ion speeds, inventing and applying state-of-the-art analytics to understand mechanisms at molecular length scales, and using computer simulations to interpret experimental results and build improved theoretical models. This work is expected to provide a renewed foundational science of interfacial ionics that will inform the invention of new electrochemical technologies for society. The science effort leverages a diverse team of research-intensive and primarily undergraduate and minority-serving institutions to synergistically create a sustainable STEM diversity pipeline. In education, CI2 will be a flagbearer for fundamental electrochemical knowledge creation, mold the next generation of diverse leaders in the electrochemical sciences that underly technologies critical for the prosperity of humanity, and disseminate topics that engage the public via students and researchers specifically trained in effective technical and non-technical science communication techniques. Innovation and entrepreneurship training are tightly embedded in the research platform to facilitate translation of the science to commercial products for societal impact.The Center for Interfacial Ionics (CI2) has the potential to revolutionize the understanding of interfacial-ion-transfer (IIT) kinetics by coupling new measurements on molecularly tunable interfaces with advances in theory and computation to uncover accurate IIT theories of broad impact in science and technology. The technical science effort focuses on three aims: (i) developing a molecular science of IIT that connects clean measurements and tractable theory at liquid/liquid junctions to technology-relevant solid/liquid junctions, (ii) probing and tuning the free-energy landscape to understand how to catalyze IIT at liquid/liquid and solid/liquid junctions, and (iii) accelerating IIT through IIT catalysis by controlling interface-absorbed intermediates and solvation/desolvation kinetic barriers. The target outcomes of CI2 are: (i) a demonstration that the fundamental properties derived from IIT studies of well-defined liquid/liquid interfaces correlate with technologically relevant solid/liquid and solid/solid interfaces, (ii) the first IIT theory that leverages data from experiment and molecular simulations from model systems and condenses the complexity of IIT to simple formulations broadly enabling quantitative prediction, and (iii) the design and demonstration of IIT catalysts.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.