What if We Were to Design Transport in Aqueous Electrolytes Using Learnings from Lithium Battery Research?

Electrolyte design has played a crucial role in the development of lithium batteries for a range of applications. Of late, there is a renewed interest in developing a new generation of aqueous batteries to cheaply store energy for the grid. Given the amount of research our community has carried out developing lithium electrolytes, an intriguing possibility is to leverage these learnings to accelerate the development of aqueous electrolytes - especially when battery development typically requires decades of effort. We herein examine this argument to guide aqueous battery electrolyte research. We discuss electrolyte design heuristics, transport mechanisms across molecular and continuum scales, and the criteria assessing electrolyte advances for improved ion transport.