Solid-State Polymer Electrolytes Based on AB3-Type Miktoarm Star Copolymers.

ABSTRACT

Miktoarm star copolymers composed of three poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO) arms connected to one polystyrene (PS) chain, i.e., PS-(PEO)3, demonstrated synergistic improvements in the ionic conductivity and mechanical strength by factors of 2-30 compared to those shown by PS-PEO diblock copolymers. Entropic constraints for the chain stretching of (PEO)3 gave rise to notably reduced domain sizes of PS-(PEO)3 electrolytes, compared with the values of PS-PEO analogues. Further, the melting transition of PS-(PEO)3 with PEO molecular weight of Mn = 2 kg mol-1 was vanished with lithium salt doping at [Li]/[EO] = 0.06 under such confinements, resulting in an order of magnitude increase in the room temperature conductivity. The fact that lithium ion transport in PEO-based copolymers can be tunable by the way PEO chains are connected to hard polymers can lead to innovative designs for solid-state polymer electrolytes.