(680d) Single-Ion Conducting Polymer Membranes for Energy Storage Applications

Single-ion Conducting Polymer Membranes
for Energy Storage Applications

Peng-Fei Cao,^a  Bingrui Li,^a Guang Yang,^b Jagjit Nanda,
^bAlexei
P. Sokolov,^a,c and Tomonori Saito^a

^a Chemical
Sciences Division, and ^b Materials Science and Technology Division,

Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN
37830, USA

^c Department
of Chemistry, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee 37996, USA

Single-ion conducting polymer
electrolytes (SCPEs) are well recognized for increased energy efficiency and
prolonged cell lifetime due to their capability to mitigate electrode polarization and reduce electrolyte loss.
Stretchable electronics, especially stretchable batteries, have attracted
significant interest. Herein, we will report the fabrication of a series of
single-ion conducting polymer electrolyte membranes with high flexibility and stretchability that can be used for stretchable
electronics. The tailored polymer membrane with polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) as
the polymer backbone and single-ion conducting polymer as the side chains has
been fabricated. The investigation revealed that the incorporation of poly(ethylene glycol) methyl ether methacrylate (PEGMEMA)
plays a significant role in forming the stretchable polymer membranes, which
can not only lower the glass transition temperature but also provide additional
reactivity. Tensile test shows that the polymer membrane can be stretched up to
250% before breaks. Modifying the molar ratio of PDMS based cross-linker in the
polymer matrix enables to tune the Young’s modulus of obtained membranes.
Broadband dielectric spectroscopy (BDS) has been employed to measure the
dc-conductivity of the membrane, and the dc-conductivity can be significantly
improved after the addition of the propylene carbonate (PC), i.e, 10^-4 S/cm.