Nature Communications (Mar 2020)

Macroscopic conductivity of aqueous electrolyte solutions scales with ultrafast microscopic ion motions

  • Vasileios Balos,
  • Sho Imoto,
  • Roland R. Netz,
  • Mischa Bonn,
  • Douwe Jan Bonthuis,
  • Yuki Nagata,
  • Johannes Hunger

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-15450-2
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 11, no. 1
pp. 1 – 8

Abstract

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The ionic conductivity of an aqueous electrolyte has a great impact on the performance of devices such as batteries. Here, the authors advance our understanding by showing that a high macroscopic conductivity originates from the large-amplitude sub-picosecond motions of ions on a molecular scale.