Laboratory of Synthesis of New Ionic Materials

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Team leader: dr hab. Tomasz Jaroń

Team leader’s e-mail address: tjaron@uw.edu.pl

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Brief description of the research topic:

The research conducted in the laboratory is focused on the weakly coordinating anions as parent materials of safe and effective solid ionic conductors. In particular, we focus on the synthesis and characterization of lithium, sodium and magnesium salts for potential use in electrochemical batteries. The salts of weakly coordinating anions reveal significant solubility even in moderately polar solvents together with reduced tendency to form ion pairs, which allows obtaining elusive unsolvated products in the ion metathesis reactions. Among such products, we are interested in hydrogen-rich substances as potential superconductors and energetic materials, as well as fullerides with superconducting properties. The new synthetic methods of above-mentioned substances are developed, with the emphasis on the green and economic synthetic routes for potential industrial applications. Variable experimental methods are utilized for characterization of the prepared samples. They range from powder and single crystal diffraction techniques, NMR, FT-IR, XPS and Raman spectroscopy – to confirm their identity – to impedance spectroscopy, thermogravimetry and others – to test their application potential. The selected compounds are also characterized under extreme pressures. The solid-state DFT calculations are a useful extension of the experimental methods.