Enhancing the ionic conductivity in a composite polymer electrolyte with ceramic nanoparticles anchored to charged polymer brushes

Polymer electrolytes a re essential for next-gene ration lithium batteries because of their excellent safety record.However,low ionic conductivity is the main obstacle restricting their commercial application.Composites with nanoparticles are a promising route to overcome this obstacle.In this work,lithium polystyrene sulfonate brushes(LiPSS)is anchored to silicon dioxide nanoparticles with chemical bonding using atom transfer radial polymerization(SI-ATRP).The composite polymer electrolytes are made by mixing vinylene carbonate and nanoparticles via a facile in situ polymerization process.The ionic conductivity of composite polymer electrolytes is improved to 7.2×10^-4 S/cm at room temperature,which is attributed to the low degree of crystallinity of polymer electrolyte and the fast ion transport on the surfaces of polymer brush layers that act as a conductive network.The composite polymer electrolytes show a wide electrochemical window of approximately 4.5 V vs.Li^+/Li and excellent cycling performance retention of approximately 95%after 100 cycles at ambient temperature.The results also prove that surface groups of ceramic na noparticles are an important way to increase the electrochemical properties of composite polymer electrolytes.