Introduction
Molten salts, together with their low-temperature analogues, the room-temperature ionic liquids, constitute a particular class of electrolytes which do not contain any solvent. They are composed of inorganic ions only: The cations (Mp+) are metallic species while the anions (Xq−) can either be halides (F−, Cl−, Br−, I−) or polyatomic species (NO3 − and CO3 2− mainly); the archetypal molten salt is sodium chloride NaCl. Being solid at ambient conditions, these salts are generally used in high-temperature applications (it is worth noting that some compounds have relatively low melting points, e.g., NaAlCl4 melts at 152 °C).
Despite the fact that the most important industrial applications of molten salts have started at the beginning of the twentieth century with the large-scale production of aluminum, their structure has long remained largely unknown. Most of the short-range structural properties can be attributed to the competition between packing effects and electrostatic...
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Salanne, M. (2014). High-Temperature Molten Salts. In: Kreysa, G., Ota, Ki., Savinell, R.F. (eds) Encyclopedia of Applied Electrochemistry. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-6996-5_502
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