Activity

From right:Prof. Kaneko,
Dr. Futamura, Dr. Iiyama

The research group, led by Special Contract Professor K. Kaneko, discovered a unique phenomenon that the ordering structure of ions in carbon nanopores is not described by the Coulomb law.

Professor Patrice Simon (Université Paul Sabatier – Toulouse III, France) and Professor Yury Gogotsi (Drexel University, USA), both Distinguished Visiting Professor at Interdisciplinary Cluster for Cutting Edge Research at Shinshu University, highly contributed to this research, explicitly indicating the significance of collaboration with Distinguished Visiting professors.

This research is published in Nature Materials on September 19th (doi: 10.1038/nmat4974)
The present research firstly evidences that cations or anions are associated each other in the carbon nanopores whose width is fit for ions, although cations or anions mutually repel in the bulk phase due to the Coulomb law. The breaking of the Coulombic ordering comes from the image charges induced in the carbon walls.


The new understanding of ions confined in carbon nanopores promotes developing higher powered energy storage devices (super capacitor) and provides new insights in other research fields.

The research group held press conference on September 21st, 2017. Dr. Ryusuke Futamura, the first author of the paper and Associate Professor Taku Iiyama also attended the press conference.

"Partial breaking of the Coulombic ordering of ionic liquids confined in carbon nanopores"
Ryusuke Futamura, Taku Iiyama, Yuma Takasaki, Yury Gogotsi, Mark J. Biggs, Mathieu Salanne, Julie Ségalini, Patrice Simon & Katsumi Kaneko
Nature Materials (2017) doi:10.1038/nmat4974

Article about this research on Drexel University site.