Role of Electron-Deficient Imidazoles in Ion Transport and Conductivity in Solid-State Polymer Electrolytes

Solid-state polymer electrolytes offer a safer alternative to traditional lithium-ion batteries based on organic electrolytes. The focus is here imidazole(Im)-functionalized electrolytes, where the Im ligand promotes salt dissolution, while its functionalization allows tuning dynamic interactions between cations in solution and tethered backbone. Although careful choice of backbone linker functionality have resulted with increased total ionic conductivities boost Li+ ion contribution, improvements performance through modifications heterocycle remain underexplored. In this work, we systematically investigate poly(methylsiloxane) polymers functionalized series halogen-substituted imidazoles show that conduction can be tuned by an electron-deficient ligand. When number halogen substituents increases, mobility also increases as measured pulsed-field-gradient nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) NMR relaxometry. beneficial for transport, ligands result clustering, indicated wide-angle X-ray scattering, poor which turn impedes overall transport. This work highlights importance synthetic design necessity high solvation weak cation–polymer binding obtain transport numbers.