Unveiling the Relationship between the Surface Chemistry of Nanoparticles and Ion Transport Properties of the Resulting Composite Electrolytes

Pin Ma; Yanyan Fang; Xiaowen Zhou; Yumeng Shi; Hui Ying Yang; Yuan Lin

doi:10.1021/acs.jpclett.0c03378

Unveiling the Relationship between the Surface Chemistry of Nanoparticles and Ion Transport Properties of the Resulting Composite Electrolytes

J Phys Chem Lett. 2021 Jan 14;12(1):642-649. doi: 10.1021/acs.jpclett.0c03378. Epub 2021 Jan 2.

Authors

Pin Ma^{1

2}, Yanyan Fang³, Xiaowen Zhou³, Yumeng Shi^{1

4}, Hui Ying Yang², Yuan Lin³

Affiliations

¹ International Collaborative Laboratory of 2D Materials for Optoelectronics Science and Technology of Ministry of Education, Institute of Microscale Optoelectronics, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen 518060, China.
² Pillar of Engineering Product Development, Singapore University of Technology and Design, 8 Somapah Road, Singapore 487372, Singapore.
³ Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, Key Laboratory of Photochemistry, CAS Research/Education Center for Excellence in Molecular Sciences, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China.
⁴ Shenzhen Key Laboratory for Advanced Materials, Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen, Shenzhen 518055, P.R. China.

PMID: 33390017
DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpclett.0c03378

Abstract

Fundamental understanding of the transport properties within nanoparticle composite electrolytes is necessary for the development of next-generation electrochemical devices. Herein, the effect of surface-modified silica nanoparticles with aminophenyl, amide, and sulfonate functional groups (AP-SiO₂, AM-SiO₂, and SU-SiO₂) on the ion transport properties of composite electrolytes is systematically investigated. The competition between surface repulsive and attractive interactions of nanoparticles is reflected in the nature of the morphology and particle network in electrolytes, further affecting the ionic conductivity of electrolytes and diffusion coefficient of ions. The obvious decrease is observed in the AP-SiO₂-based system because of the severe agglomeration of nanoparticles. By contrast, the AM-SiO₂ and SU-SiO₂ form the regular particle network structure and accelerate the salt dissociation in electrolytes, thereby providing an effective ion transport pathway and more mobile ions for conduction, respectively. Consequently, the composite systems with AM-SiO₂ and SU-SiO₂ deliver remarkable enhancement in the ion transport properties.