Mechanism of Efficient Proton Conduction in Diphosphoric Acid Elucidated via First-Principles Simulation and NMR

Diphosphoric acid (H_4P_2O_7) is the first condensation product of phosphoric acid (H_3PO_4), the compound with the highest intrinsic proton conductivity in the liquid state. It exists at higher temperature (T > 200 °C) and lower relative humidity (RH ≈ 0.01%) and shows significant ionic conductivity under these conditions. In this work, ab initio molecular dynamics simulations of a pure H_4P_2O_7 model system and NMR spectroscopy on nominal H_4P_2O_7 (which contains significant amounts of ortho- and triphosphoric acid in thermodynamic equilibrium) were performed to reveal the nature and underlying mechanisms of the ionic conductivity. The central oxygen of the molecule is found to be excluded from any hydrogen bonding, which has two interesting consequences: (i) compared to H_3PO_4, the acidity of H_4P_2O_7 is severely increased, and (ii) the condensation reaction only leads to a minor decrease in hydrogen bond network frustration, which is thought to be one of the features enabling high proton conductivity. A topological analysis of diphosphoric acid's hydrogen bond network shows remarkable similarities to that of phosphonic acid (H_3PO_3). The hydrogen bonding facilitates protonic polarization fluctuations (Zundel polarization) extending over several molecules (Grotthuss chains), the other important ingredient for efficient structural diffusion of protons. At T = 160 °C, this is estimated to make a conductivity contribution of about 0.1 S/cm, which accounts for half of the total ionic conductivity (σ ≈ 0.2 S/cm). The other half is suggested to result from diffusion of charged phosphate species (vehicle mechanism) that are present in high concentration, resembling conduction in ionic liquids.