Development on Solid Polymer Electrolytes for Electrochemical Devices

Electrochemical devices, especially energy storage, have been around for many decades. Liquid electrolytes (LEs), which are known for their volatility and flammability, are mostly used in the fabrication of the devices. Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) and quantum dot sensitized solar cells (QDSSCs) are also using electrochemical reaction to operate. Following the demand for green and safer energy sources to replace fossil energy, this has raised the research interest in solid-state electrochemical devices. Solid polymer electrolytes (SPEs) are among the candidates to replace the LEs. Hence, understanding the mechanism of ions' transport in SPEs is crucial to achieve similar, if not better, performance to that of LEs. In this paper, the development of SPE from basic construction to electrolyte optimization, which includes polymer blending and adding various types of additives, such as plasticizers and fillers, is discussed.

Conductive Electrospun Nanofiber Mats

Conductive nanofiber mats can be used in a broad variety of applications, such as electromagnetic shielding, sensors, multifunctional textile surfaces, organic photovoltaics, or biomedicine. While nanofibers or nanofiber from pure or blended polymers can in many cases unambiguously be prepared by electrospinning, creating conductive nanofibers is often more challenging. Integration of conductive nano-fillers often needs a calcination step to evaporate the non-conductive polymer matrix which is necessary for the electrospinning process, while conductive polymers have often relatively low molecular weights and are hard to dissolve in common solvents, both factors impeding spinning them solely and making a spinning agent necessary. On the other hand, conductive coatings may disturb the desired porous structure and possibly cause problems with biocompatibility or other necessary properties of the original nanofiber mats. Here we give an overview of the most recent developments in the growing field of conductive electrospun nanofiber mats, based on electrospinning blends of spinning agents with conductive polymers or nanoparticles, alternatively applying conductive coatings, and the possible applications of such conductive electrospun nanofiber mats.