Authors: Oleg Borodin G D Smith
Publish Date: 2007/04/27
Volume: 36, Issue: 6, Pages: 803-813
Abstract
Molecular dynamics simulations have been performed on oligoethylene oxides of various molecular weights doped with the lithium bistrifluoromethanesulfonylimide salt LiTFSI in order to explore the mechanism of Li+ transport in materials covering the range from liquid electrolytes to prototypes for high molecular weight polyethylene oxidebased polymer electrolytes Good agreement between MD simulations and experiments is observed for the conductivity of electrolytes as a function of molecular weight Unlike Li+ transport in liquid ethylene carbonate EC that comes from approximately equal contributions of vehicular Li+ motion motion together with solvent and Li+ diffusion by solvent exchange Li+ transport in oligoethers was found to occur predominantly by vehicular motion The slow solvent exchange of Li+ in oligoethylene oxides highlights why high molecular weight amorphous polymer electrolytes with oligoethylene oxides solvating groups suffer from poor Li+ transport Ion complexation and correlation of cation and anion motion is examined for oligoethers and compared with that in EC
Keywords: