Abstract
We use atomistic simulations to probe the ion conductivities and mechanical properties of polyethylene oxide electrolytes containing Al2O3 nanoparticles. We specifically study the influence of repulsive polymer-nanoparticle and ion-nanoparticle interactions and compare the results with those reported for electrolytes containing the polymorph β-Al2O3 nanoparticles. We observe that incorporating repulsive nanoparticle interactions generally results in increased ionic mobilities and decreased elastic moduli for the electrolyte. Our results indicate that both ion transport and mechanical properties are influenced by the polymer segmental dynamics in the interfacial zones of the nanoparticle in the ion-doped systems. Such effects were seen to be determined by an interplay between the nanoparticle-polymer, nanoparticle-ion, and ion-polymer interactions. In addition, such interactions were also observed to influence the number of dissociated ions and the resulting conductivities. Within the perspective of the influence of nanoparticles on the polymer relaxation times in ion-doped systems, our results in the context of viscoelastic properties were consistent with the ionic mobilities. Overall, our results serve to highlight some issues that confront the efforts to use nanoparticle dispersions to simultaneously enhance the conductivity and the mechanical strength of polymer electrolyte.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 154905 |
| Journal | Journal of Chemical Physics |
| Volume | 144 |
| Issue number | 15 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Apr 21 2016 |
Funding
The authors acknowledge the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at The University of Texas at Austin for providing computing resources that have contributed to the research results reported within this paper. This work was supported in part by grants from Robert A. Welch Foundation (Grant No. F1599) and National Science Foundation (Grant No. DMR-1306844) and the U.S. Army Research Office under Grant No. W911NF-13-1-0396.