Mechanism of electrostatic stabilization of self-assembled morphologies in soft materials systems
발표자
()
초록
내용
Polymer electrolytes (PEs) with network morphologies is highly desirable to have efficient ion-conduction, but the development of stable network morphologies has been limited in charged block copolymer systems due to the narrow stability window. In this work, we perform molecular dynamic (MD) simulations utilizing recently developed first principles force fields for PEs along with experimental characterization to investigate the role of the monomer structure and the ion composition in stabilizing different morphologies of acid-tethered block copolymers comprising ionic liquids. Notably, the simulations show self-assembly of the polymers into the experimentally observed LAM, HEX and cubic structures with varying conditions, illustrating the predictive power of the novel force fields. Our collaborative work provides novel routes to develop functional PEs with peculiar network morphologies which can further facilitate next generation PEs with high ionic conductivity.