Highly Conductive and Thermally Stable Ion Gels with Tunable Anisotropy and Modulus

Ying Wang; Ying Chen; Jianwei Gao; Hyun Gook Yoon; Liyu Jin; Maria Forsyth; Theo J Dingemans; Louis A Madsen

doi:10.1002/adma.201505183

Highly Conductive and Thermally Stable Ion Gels with Tunable Anisotropy and Modulus

Adv Mater. 2016 Apr 6;28(13):2571-8. doi: 10.1002/adma.201505183. Epub 2016 Jan 29.

Authors

Ying Wang¹, Ying Chen¹, Jianwei Gao², Hyun Gook Yoon³, Liyu Jin³, Maria Forsyth³, Theo J Dingemans², Louis A Madsen¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemistry and Macromolecules and Interfaces Institute, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, 24061, USA.
² Faculty of Aerospace Engineering, Delft University of Technology, Kluyverweg 1, 2629 HS, Delft, The Netherlands.
³ Institute for Frontier Materials and ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science, Deakin University, Geelong, VIC, 3216, Australia.

PMID: 26822386
DOI: 10.1002/adma.201505183

Abstract

A new liquid-crystalline ion gel exhibits unprecedented properties: conductivity up to 8 mS cm(-1) , thermal stability to 300 °C, and electrochemical window to 6.1 V, as well as adjustable transport anisotropy (up to 3.5×) and elastic modulus (0.03-3 GPa). The combination of ionic liquid and magnetically oriented rigid-rod polyanion provides widely tunable properties for use in diverse electrochemical devices.

Keywords: diffusion; ionic liquids; liquid crystals; magnetic alignment; rigid-rod polyelectrolytes.