CCI Phase I: NSF Center for Interfacial Ionics

美国国家科学基金会界面离子中心（CI2）是由化学创新中心（CCI）计划在化学部的支持。CI2的工作涉及电化学，即电池设计、腐蚀控制（生锈）、可再生碳中性氢和液体燃料生产、碳捕获技术以及生物学（例如神经系统）中信息的传输和处理的基础科学。虽然电化学本质上是离子（带正电荷或负电荷的原子或分子）和电子运动的耦合，但通常只有电子的流动才能通过实验（如电流）来测量。这导致了“以电子为中心”的概念基础，不能最佳地支持受离子运动方式限制的电化学技术设计。NSF CI2将通过建立精确的平台来测量离子速度，发明和应用最先进的分析来理解分子长度尺度的机制，并使用计算机模拟来解释实验结果并建立改进的理论模型，从而解决离子如何在界面上移动的基础科学差距。这项工作有望为界面离子学提供新的基础科学，为社会提供新的电化学技术的发明。科学工作利用了一个多元化的研究密集型团队，主要是本科生和少数民族服务机构，以协同创造一个可持续的STEM多样性管道。在教育方面，CI2将成为基础电化学知识创造的旗手，塑造下一代电化学科学领域的多元化领导者，这些领导者是对人类繁荣至关重要的技术的基础，并通过接受有效技术和非技术科学交流技术专门培训的学生和研究人员传播吸引公众的主题。创新创业培训紧密嵌入研究平台，促进科学转化为商业产品，产生社会影响。界面离子中心（CI2）有可能通过将分子可调界面的新测量与理论和计算的进步相结合，从而彻底改变对界面离子转移（IIT）动力学的理解，从而揭示在科学和技术中具有广泛影响的准确IIT理论。技术科学工作集中在三个目标上：(i)发展IIT的分子科学，将液体/液体连接处的清洁测量和可处理理论与技术相关的固体/液体连接处联系起来；（ii）探测和调整自由能前景，以了解如何在液体/液体和固体/液体连接处催化IIT； （iii）通过控制界面吸收的中间体和溶剂化/脱溶动力学障碍，通过IIT催化加速IIT。CI2的目标成果是：(i)证明从IIT对定义良好的液体/液体界面的研究中得出的基本性质与技术上相关的固体/液体和固体/固体界面相关，（ii）第一个IIT理论，利用模型系统的实验和分子模拟数据，将IIT的复杂性浓缩为简单的公式，广泛地进行定量预测，以及（iii）设计和演示IIT催化剂。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.