Skyler Ware - Three Minute Thesis - 4/25/2023

how would you like to charge your phone only once a week would you be more willing to buy an electric car if it could take you twice as far as it does now how might your world be different if you could pay less for medicine believe it or not all of those scenarios are in our reach but to achieve them we need to use electricity to

a reaction from any reactions that use electricity like capturing energy with solar cells we use water-based electrolytes most of the time those work just fine they're cheap they're safe and they're easy to make but there's a problem just like how water will evaporate at high enough temperatures it will also break down into hydrogen and oxygen under a strong enough electric current that means we can't put

Gatorade in our batteries and we can't make medicines with Pedialyte we'd end up breaking down water instead of making the products we want so what can we use instead well that's where my work comes in as an electrochemist I develop new electrolyte solutions that don't contain any water instead I dissolve the electrolytes in a different liquid that's far less likely to break down often the same

types of liquids used in perfumes and cleaners these water free electrolytes allow us to do new chemical reactions with electricity perhaps the most tangible application of water free electrolytes is in batteries I've worked with a team to design new electrolyte solutions that could help us Power Research vehicles on other planets but we draw on the same principles to Power electric cars trucks and airplanes here on

Earth we could even use them to one day power our cities with renewable energy using electricity can drastically reduce the amount of specialized and expensive chemicals that we need to make medicines our team has developed water-free electrolytes to recycle one such chemical samarium iodide which is used to make cancer treatment drugs and antibacterial products with our new electrolytes we hope to use 90 less samarium iodide

to make the same amount of Medicine water free electrolytes will help us build a world where we can take a cross-country road trip in an electric car where we never get stuck begging to borrow our friend's phone charger where our lifestyles are more sustainable and perhaps most importantly we're life-saving medicines are more affordable and accessible for all of us thank you thank you