Molecular Design of the Solid Copolymer Electrolyte-Poly(styrene-b-ethylene oxide) for Lithium Ion Batteries

Poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO) is a commonly used electrolytic polymer in lithium ion batteries because of its high viscosity which allows fabricating thin layers. However, its inherent low ionic conductivity must be enhanced by the addition of highly conductive salt additives. Also its weak mechanical strength needs a complementary block, such as poly(styrene) (PS), to strengthen the electrolytic membrane during charging/discharging processes. PS is a strong material to complement the PEO and to create a reinforced copolymer electrolyte termed as the poly(styrene-b-ethylene oxide) (PS-PEO). In this work, molecular dynamics simulations are employed to study the effects of doping the PS constituents into the PEO based copolymer electrolyte. The results reveal that strengthening the mechanical strength increases the intra conjugation forces which penalize the ionic conductivity. Hence both ionic conductivity and mechanical strength of the copolymer have to be compromised. This paper designs the optimized molecular structure through the atomistic analysis instead of try-and-error experiments.