A Self-Healing Ionic Liquid-Based Ionically Cross-Linked Gel Polymer Electrolyte for Electrochromic Devices

Wanyu Chen; Siyuan Liu; Le Guo; Guixia Zhang; Heng Zhang; Meng Cao; Lili Wu; Tianxing Xiang; Yong Peng

doi:10.3390/polym13050742

A Self-Healing Ionic Liquid-Based Ionically Cross-Linked Gel Polymer Electrolyte for Electrochromic Devices

Polymers (Basel). 2021 Feb 27;13(5):742. doi: 10.3390/polym13050742.

Authors

Wanyu Chen¹, Siyuan Liu¹, Le Guo², Guixia Zhang¹, Heng Zhang¹, Meng Cao¹, Lili Wu¹, Tianxing Xiang², Yong Peng²

Affiliations

¹ School of Materials Science and Engineering, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan 430070, China.
² State Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology for Materials Synthesis and Processing, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan 430070, China.

Abstract

An ionic liquid-based ionically cross-linked gel polymer electrolyte (GPE-ILs) was successfully synthesized using acrylic acid, 2-diethylaminoethyl methacrylate, methyl methacrylate, and ionic liquids. Electrochromic devices (ECDs) with an architecture of glass/FTO/WO₃/GPE-ILs/FTO/glass were fabricated by a laminating technology. The devices showed performances of large optical modulation of 49.9% at 650 nm, short switching times with the coloration time (tc) of 7 s and the bleaching time (tb) of 4 s, high coloration efficiency of 96.2 cm² C^-1, and cycling stability of 200 cycles. The GPE-ILs exhibits high ionic conductivity, superior thermal stability and good self-healing ability. GPE-ILs demonstrates an ionic conductivity of 3.19 × 10^-3 S cm^-1 at 25 °C and the same ions migration behaviors with most widely used liquid electrolyte between -10 and 80 °C maintains more than 80% of its tensile strength after self-healing and received only 5% weight loss at 300 °C.

Keywords: electrochromic device; electrolyte; ionic liquids; ionically cross-linked gel.