Design of block copolymer templated solid state batteries

The advent of portable electronics has placed a great demand on the power requirements of battery systems. High power batteries for small devices, such as cell phones, laptop computers, and personal data assistants (PDA's) have focused primarily on lithium ion batteries. With the introduction of large flexible panel displays, the need for a flexible battery system is apparent. Ring Opening Metathesis Polymerization (ROMP) is a facile method for synthesizing block copolymers with polar functional groups. These functional groups allow the formation of metal oxide clusters via a template of the microphase separated block copolymer domains.; In this thesis, the synthesis of a flexible polymer battery system is described. Diblock copolymers of an ionically conductive unsaturated polyethylene oxide block with a carboxylic acid functionalized block were synthesized and characterized with NMR, IR and Gel Permeation Chromatography (GPC). Characterization of polymer templated LiMn₂O ₄ clusters and nanocomposites synthesized for the study have a distributed cluster morphology within the polymer matrix. The nanocomposites were analyzed with transmission electron microscopy to determine the morphology of the nanocomposites. Battery performance was characterized with cyclic voltammetry and galvanostatic charge/discharge cycling for power capacity. The ionic conductivity was measured with impedance spectroscopy. The novel room temperature templating strategy used for the synthesis of these ionically conductive nanocomposites requires no thermal cycling steps. This makes it attractive for processing of sheet structures to power flexible displays.