Ion transport in polymerized lyotropic liquid crystals containing ionic liquid |
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| Authors: | Alireza Bandegi Kyungtae Kim Reza Foudazi |
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| Affiliation: | 1. Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, New Mexico, USA;2. Materials Physics and Applications Division, Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico, USA |
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| Abstract: | In this work, we investigate the effect of morphology and segmental dynamics on ion transport in polymerized lyotropic liquid crystals (polyLLCs) containing 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium tetrafluoroborate as ionic liquid (IL). We demonstrate that two important factors, which affect ion conduction in polyLLCs, are grain size and chain density at the interface. The polyLLC with large grain size (70 nm) shows significant reduction in ion conductivity (one order of magnitude) compared to its homopolymer/IL mixture. However, the polyLLC with small grain size (20 nm) has little difference in ion conductivity compared to its homopolymer/IL mixture. It is observed that decreasing the chain density enhances the interaction of IL with polymer chains and consequently slows the relaxation of polymer chains. In addition, comparing the dynamics of polymer chains in mixtures of homopolymer/IL and templated LLC mesophases shows that the confinement in LLC structure prolongs the relaxation of polymer chains. |
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| Keywords: | confinement ion transport ionic liquids lyotropic liquid crystals nanostructure |
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