Polymer Science and Technology

Biography

Biography: Denis O Ponkratov

Abstract

In recent years, research efforts have been focused on development of solid polymer electrolytes with the goal to enhance the intrinsic safety and to replace flammable liquid electrolytes in Li batteries. However, application of this technology is still limited due to the insufficient ionic conductivity of the known polymers or by low tensile properties of gel electrolytes. The alternative approach is to incorporate covalently lithium salt moieties into the main polymer chain and to create the so-called single-ion conducting polymers (SICs). These all-in-one solid electrolytes are formed by a main polymer chain carrying anionic functional groups and lithium ions as the mobile counterpart. The rational design of SICs emerges as a primary strategy for enhancing the performance of lithium ion batteries. In this work, two methods were proposed for obtaining SIC with high ionic conductivity. In the first case, ion-conducting random copolymers were obtained using free radical polymerization of methacrylate-ionic monomers with a lithium cation (Li-monomers) with poly (ethylene glycol) methyl methacrylate ether. The second approach consisted in sequential RAFT-polymerization of Li-monomers and non-ionic monomers to produce block copolymers