Meeting of the Princeton ACS Section
Wednesday, February 21, 2024
Dr. James F. Wishart
Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY
“Ionic Liquids, Molten Salts, and their Radiation Chemistry”
Frick Chemistry Laboratory, Taylor Auditorium, Princeton University
Mixer (in Atrium) 6:30 pm; Lecture 7:00 pm
Abstract: Ionic liquids (ILs, or low-temperature molten salts) have dramatically different properties compared to conventional molecular solvents, and they provide an unconventional and useful environment to test our theoretical understanding of primary radiation chemistry, charge transfer and other reactions. We are interested in how IL properties influence physical and dynamical processes that determine the stability and lifetimes of reactive intermediates and thereby affect the courses of reactions and product distributions, for example the competition between excess electron solvation dynamics and the scavenging of electrons in different states of solvation. These investigations require us to delve deeply into the physical chemistry connections between IL structure, dynamics, and reactivity. In 2018 we began to apply the approaches and insights we gained from ionic liquids to understanding the behavior of high temperature molten salts for use in molten salt reactors (a very promising 4th-generation nuclear reactor technology), through the Molten Salts in Extreme Environments (MSEE) EFRC. There are many parallels despite the wide differences in temperature and ionic structure. I will describe how MSEE is using state-of-the-art instrumentation and computational capabilities to paint a detailed picture of how molten salts are structured on the atomic level and how that structure controls the speciation and properties of solute metal ions. The chemical effects of radiation on salts and solutes will be described through the reaction mechanisms of primary radical species and comparisons with ionic liquid radiation chemistry.
Biography: James F. Wishart is the Director of the U. S. Department of Energy’s Molten Salts in Extreme Environments Energy Frontier Research Center and a Distinguished Chemist in the Chemistry Division of Brookhaven National Laboratory, where he has worked for 36 years. He has been studying the physical chemistry and radiation chemistry of ionic liquids, and recently molten salts, for 22 years. He received a Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from MIT in 1979 and a Ph. D. in Inorganic Chemistry from Stanford University in 1985 (Advisor: Henry Taube, Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 1983). He was a postdoctoral research associate at Rutgers University between 1985 and 1987, where he worked with Stephan Isied and Kenneth Breslauer. He built the BNL Laser-Electron Accelerator Facility (LEAF) for picosecond electron pulse radiolysis in the mid-1990s. In 2019 he received the Maria Skłodowska-Curie Medal from the Polish Radiation Research Society, for his distinguished achievements in the field of radiation chemistry and long-lasting and productive cooperation with Polish scientists. In December 2023 he received the Brookhaven National Laboratory Pinnacle Award in Science and Technology.
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