Enhancement of Lithium-Ion Conductivity in Liquid Crystalline Block Copolymer Electrolyte by Electric Field Alignment
imcn | Louvain-la-Neuve
In collaboration with research teams from Aalto University in Finland and from Helmholtz Institute Ulm in Germany, researchers from BSMA Isaac Álvarez Moisés, Garance Keus, Zhenni He and Jean François Gohy have investigated block copolymers with a liquid crystal and a lithium-ion conductive phase to assess the influence of an external applied electric field on the bulk morphology and the resulting electrochemical performance.
Interestingly, the block copolymer electrolyte (BCPE) casted with electric field treatment gives rise to highly ordered cylindrical structures in comparison to the same BCPE without electric field treatment, which in turn exhibits poorly ordered worm-like morphology.
Consequently, a consistent improvement of the ionic conductivity is observed for the electric field-treated polymer.
Surprisingly, the BCPE microstructure aligns perpendicular to the applied stimulus, which is explained by the movement of the whole liquid crystalline layer rather than by the individual mesogen reorientation. Those results have been obtained in the frame of the POLYSTORAGE ITN and have been recently published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
Authors: Isaac Álvarez Moisés, Monika Król, Garance Keus, Zhenni He, Alessandro Innocenti, Stefano Passerini, Janne Ruokolainen, Jean-François Gohy