Wood cellulose-based thin gel electrolyte with enhanced ionic conductivity
- PDF / 637,332 Bytes
- 7 Pages / 612 x 792 pts (letter) Page_size
- 93 Downloads / 207 Views
Research Letter
Wood cellulose-based thin gel electrolyte with enhanced ionic conductivity Aswani Poosapati and Karla Negrete, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, MD 21250, USA Nathaniel Jang and Liangbing Hu, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20740, USA Yucheng Lan, Department of Physics, Morgan State University, Baltimore, MD 21251, USA Deepa Madan , Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, MD 21250, USA Address all correspondence to Deepa Madan at [email protected] (Received 18 March 2019; accepted 30 May 2019)
Abstract Polymeric electrolytes have attracted recent research interest because they offer the advantages of being safe and non-flammable, having no dendrite formation, and having no possibility of leakage. The incorporation of synthetic polymers to gel electrolytes has numerous disadvantages: for instance, the required preparation time for creating gel electrolytes from synthetic polymers is dubious and lengthy. Additionally, the conventional pristine polymer gel electrolyte layer has been reported to have low ionic conductivity. This work is focused on preparing a thin flexible gel electrolyte layer by using a naturally occurring wood-based nanofiber cellulose (NFC) hydrogel, to overcome the energy and time consumption of conventional processes. In addition, we use polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) as an additive to the NFC hydrogel in controlled amounts to fabricate a stable thin gel electrolyte layer. By using x-ray diffraction, optical microscopy, and Fourier transform infrared spectra studies, we were able to further our understanding of the microstructure of the films: i.e., the penetration and cross-linking (changes in the bonding structures) of semi-crystalline PVA and hydrogel to form a flexible gel electrolyte layer. The NFC hydrogel-PVA films resulted in much higher ionic conductivity values when compared to other existing pristine polymer electrolytes. The addition of KOH to the NFC hydrogel-PVA further enhanced the ionic conductivity. The best ionic conductivity recorded was 75 mS/cm for films with thickness in the range of 200–350 µm, which is comparable to the highest reported ionic conductivity values of gel electrolytes.
Introduction The role of rechargeable batteries in energy conservation and storage is vital to the progression of technologic advancements. The primary requirements when constructing rechargeable batteries are reversibility, energy storage capability, and power output. These properties are majorly based on the composition of the batteries and also the reactions happening at their interfaces. Batteries, regardless of their chemistry, are composed of several electrochemical cells, each having opposing electrodes separated by an electrolyte.[1] Generally, an electrolyte is extensively responsible for the redox reactions that occur at the interfaces, and thus its preparation is a vital step in constructing a battery. It acts as a medium providing a path
Data Loading...
