PFI-BIC: Market-Guided Ionic Liquid Discovery and Design

圣母大学的这一创新伙伴关系项目将发现、设计离子液体(ILS)，并将其转化为创新的新产品和工艺，最终可能准备好投入市场。将追求三个目标市场：1)开发有效地将“废热”转化为有用电能的工艺；2)寻找在金属表面沉积硬金属涂层的对环境无害的新方法；以及3)开发改进的“超级电容器”(储存电能并可快速充放电数百万次的设备)。每种应用程序都将使用IL，定义为室温附近液体的纯盐。离子液体是相对较新发现的化合物，具有许多传统液体所没有的独特性质，如几乎没有蒸汽压、固有的导电性、高热稳定性和大的电化学窗口。该项目将利用这些特性来开发满足大市场需求的新产品和新工艺。这项研究的更广泛影响是，它将解决社会多个领域的问题，这些问题对美国和世界经济至关重要。它将提供离子液体领域的实际技术设计和实施机会。从长远来看，将有机会为几种生产规模的应用优化候选离子液体，同时降低批量制造成本。该项目将允许两家总部位于创新公园圣母院的小型企业帮助印第安纳州南本德这个传统的中西部制造业城市重塑自身。该项目开始时的合作伙伴是圣母大学(牵头机构，印第安纳州圣母院)。小企业：Echogen Power Systems Inc.(俄亥俄州阿克伦)；Ionic Research Technologies LLC(南本德，IN)；Neo Industries LLC(Porage，IN)。大型企业：Maxwell Technologies，Inc.(加利福尼亚州圣地亚哥)；联合技术研究中心(East Hartford，CT)。其他不属于KEP小组的合作伙伴组织是圣母大学尊重专业科学和工程硕士计划、创新园区圣母大学、Michiana TechConnection和圣母大学专利法理科硕士计划。

This Partnership for Innovation project from the University of Notre Dame will discover, design, and translate ionic liquids (ILs) into new products and processes that are innovative and might eventually be ready to be marketed. Three target markets will be pursued: 1) development of processes to efficiently turn 'waste' heat into useful electricity; 2) finding new environmentally benign ways to deposit hard metal coatings on metal surfaces; and 3) developing improved 'ultracapacitors' (devices that store electrical energy and can be charged and discharged rapidly over millions of times). Each application will utilize an IL, defined as a pure salt that is liquid around room temperature. ILs are relatively newly discovered compounds that have many unique properties not found in conventional liquids, such as virtually no vapor pressure, inherent electrical conductivity, high thermal stability, and large electrochemical windows. These properties will be exploited in this project to develop new products and processes that address large market needs. The broader impacts of this research are that it will address issues across multiple cross-sections of society that are of critical importance to the U.S. and world economy. It will provide hands-on technology design and implementation opportunities in the area of ionic liquids. In the long term, there will be opportunities to optimize candidate ionic liquids for several production-scale applications while at the same time reducing volume manufacturing costs. The project will allow two small, Innovation Park Notre Dame-based businesses to help South Bend, Indiana, a traditional Midwestern manufacturing city, re-invent itself. Partners at the inception of this project are the University of Notre Dame (lead institution, Notre Dame, IN). Small businesses: Echogen Power Systems Inc. (Akron, OH); Ionic Research Technologies LLC (South Bend, IN); Neo Industries LLC (Portage, IN). Large businesses: Maxwell Technologies, Inc. (San Diego, CA); and United Technologies Research Center (East Hartford, CT). Additional partner organizations that are not part of the KEP groups are the Notre Dame ESTEEM professional science and engineering master's program, Innovation Park Notre Dame, Michiana TechConnection, and the Notre Dame Master of Science in Patent Law program.