FT-Raman spectroscopy study of solvent-in-salt electrolytes

Cation–anion interaction with different ratios of salt to solvent is investigated by FT-Raman spectroscopy. The fitting result of the C–N–C bending vibration manifests that the cation–anion coordination structure changes tremendously with the variation of salt concentration. It is well known that lithium-ion transport in ultrahigh salt concentration electrolyte is dramatically different from that in dilute electrolyte, due to high viscosity and strong cation–anion interaction. In ultrahigh salt concentrated "solvent-in-salt" electrolyte (SIS-7#), we found, on one hand, that the cation and anion in the solution mainly formed cation–anion pairs with a high Li⁺ coordination number (≥ 1), including intimate ion pairs (20.1%) and aggregated ion pairs (79.9%), which not only cause low total ionic conductivity but also cause a high lithium transference number (0.73). A possible lithium transport mechanism is proposed: in solvent-in-salt electrolytes, lithium ions' direct movement presumably depends on Li-ion exchange between aggregated ion pairs and solvent molecules, which repeats a dissolving and re-complexing process between different oxygen groups of solvent molecules. (special topic)