Ionic Liquid and Advanced Technology

ILA will be Norway's first research group on ionic liquids research. Ionic liquids are an important research topic in the whole world now. However, researchers in Norway do not perform so much work on ionic ionic liquids research.

With the cooperation with national and international participants, ILA can become the first and best research group in ionic liquids in Norway. In 5 to 10 years, the ILA plans to become one of the best research groups on ionic fluids worldwide.

There will be 20 main scientific members in the research group. They are employees from HVL, UiB, UiT, SINTEF, IFE, NTNU, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China University of Petroleum, National Institute of Technology (India), and University of Texas at El Paso (USA). In addition, PhD students, and undergraduate level students will be involved in the group.

Research topics in ILA will be about: 

• Utilization of ionic liquids in novel clean process technology development
• Utilization of ionic liquids for new batteries technology development
• Utilization of ionic liquids for new medical science technology development
• Utilization of ionic liquids in petroleum science
• Utilization of ionic liquids for novel functional materials synthesis

Battery research is the main research topic in ILA. Head the of Research Group is associate professor Yansong Zhao. Zhao has a good background in battery technology and ionic liquids. He has developed a new battery technology. He used ionic liquids as an electrolyte in this new battery technology. Ionic liquids have low vapor pressure, high thermal and chemical stability, broad electrochemical windows, and high ionic conductivity properties. Therefore, ionic liquid is good electrolyte for energy units.

In the ILA, we are also planning to use new battery technology that we have developed for smart road technology development. Smart road can be built by solar panel, wind turbine, batteries we have developed, and wireless charging system. Road surface is built by solar panel. Wind turbines can be installed on both sides of the road. Electric power from the solar panel and the wind turbine can be transferred to batteries along the smart road. Then, the electric car on a smart road can be recharged by the wireless charging station under the smart road, powered by batteries, solar panels and wind turbines. Therefore, in theory, electric car can be driven on the smart road as long as people need it.

There are 4 primary benefits of this smart road technology:

1. Electric power is from solar and wind energy
2. Vehicles driving on smart roads can be loaded by the wireless charging system and batteries we developed
3. Power from solar and wind energy can melt snow and ice on the road (this is very important for roads in the cold area, such as the road in Norway)
4. Electric power in batteries on the road can also benefit driverless car technology development and other future smart technology developments on this smart road. NG batteries are much better than Li-ion batteries to build the future

Using the new IL electrolyte-based battery technology that we have developed, we can develop a brand new wireless charging smart way. In addition, the ILA can also benefit from IL's relevant new technology development within health and medicine, environmentally friendly agriculture, as well as production and processing of oil and gas. 

Research Projects

• UTFORSK-project (2020-2021): Sino-Norwegian collaborative research programme on novel battery fabrication using ionic liquids and nanotechnology
• Ionic Liquids for new medicine development (2013 - 2020)
• FoU-prosjekt: Batteries and solar cells fabrication using ionic liquids and nanotechnology

Head of Research Group