(212h) Ion Transport and Interfacial Dynamics in Polymerized Ionic Liquids

Polymerized ionic liquids are a class of novel functional polymer electrolytes that combines the unique physicochemical properties of molecular ionic liquids (e.g. non-flammability, wide electrochemical windows, negligible vapor pressures, and ionic conduction) with the outstanding mechanical characteristics of polymers. These materials are promising for a variety of applications including dye-sensitized solar cells, portable batteries, actuators, field-effect transistors and electrochromic devices. However, their ionic conductivity, which is one of the most critical properties in the context of electrochemical energy applications, drops by many orders of magnitude in comparison to their low molecular weight counterparts upon polymerization. In this talk, a new approach to employ nanoscale confinement and interfacial forces to develop polymerized ionic liquids with enhanced ionic conduction will be presented. We will demonstrate that polymerization in nanochannels promotes molecular alignment and charge transport, resulting into enhancement of the dc ionic conductivity by up to three orders of magnitude in model systems. These results contribute to the understanding of the dynamics of nanoconfined molecules and show that in situ polymerization under nanoscale geometric confinement is a promising path toward enhancing ion conductivity in polymer electrolytes.