Studies on potassium-ion conducting gel polymer electrolytes containing poly(vinylidene fluoride-hexafluoropropylene) polymer, potassium permanganate salt added with different plasticizers

• Published in: Ionics Vol. 30; no. 4; pp. 2139 - 2153
• Main Authors: Madhani, Vaishali, Kumar, Deepak, Patel, Maitri, Kanchan, D. K., Mishra, Kuldeep, Rathore, Mahendra Singh
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 01-04-2024; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Charge transport; Chemistry; Chemistry and Materials Science; Comparative studies; Condensed Matter Physics; Dielectric loss; Dielectric properties; Dimethyl ether; Electrochemistry; Electrolytes; Energy Storage; Fluorides; Fourier transforms; Infrared analysis; Ion currents; Optical and Electronic Materials; Plasticizers; Polymers; Potassium; Potassium permanganate; Propylene; Renewable and Green Energy; Solvents; Stability analysis; Thermal analysis; Vinylidene; Vinylidene fluoride; Weight loss; KMnO; salt; Potassium-ion conductor; Carbonate and glyme solvents; Gel polymer electrolytes; Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy
• ISSN: 0947-7047; 1862-0760
• DOI: 10.1007/s11581-024-05405-8

In this work, a comparative study is presented utilizing a K
+
conducting gel polymer electrolyte (GPE) system comprising of a poly(vinylidene fluoride-hexafluoropropylene) (PVdF-HFP) polymer matrix combined with potassium permanganate (KMnO
4
) salt and two different plasticizers as a binary combination of ethylene carbonate (EC) + propylene carbonate (PC) and tetraethylene glycol dimethyl ether (TEGDME). The electrolyte with TEGDME solvent shows an ionic conductivity (
σ
) of 7.01 × 10
−6
S cm
−1
with hopping of ions as charge transport behavior. The fabricated electrolyte possesses > 98% contribution from the ions, and the electro-chemical stability range is up to 3.2 V. The dielectric analysis shows that the electrolyte with TEGDME solvent possesses a higher value of the dielectric constant, dielectric loss, tangent loss, and dc conductivity, along with a higher free ion number density (
N
) in comparison to the counter-electrolyte specimens with EC:PC solvent. The thermal studies confirm the gel phase of both electrolytes with negligible weight loss till 100 °C. Polymer-salt complex interactions are confirmed using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), while X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis is used to study the variations in crystallinity brought about by the polymer and both electrolyte samples.