A physical organogel electrolyte: characterized by in situ thermo-irreversible gelation and single-ion-predominent conduction

A physical organogel electrolyte: characterized by in situ thermo-irreversible gelation and single-ion-predominent conduction

Electrolytes are characterized by their ionic conductivity (σ(i)). It is desirable that overall σ(i) results from the dominant contribution of the ions of interest (e.g. Li(+) in lithium ion batteries or LIB). However, high values of cationic transference number (t+) achieved by solid or gel electrolytes have resulted in low σ(i) leading to inferior cell performances. Here we present an organog...

Static and dynamic heterogeneities in irreversible gels and colloidal gelation

We compare the slow dynamics of irreversible gels, colloidal gels, glasses and spin glasses by analyzing the behavior of the so called non-linear dynamical susceptibility, a quantity usually introduced to quantitatively characterize the dynamical heterogeneities. In glasses this quantity typically grows with the time, reaches a maximum and then decreases at large time, due to the transient natu...

Prediction of Surface Tension in Single and Mixed Electrolyte Solutions

Interface-enhanced Li ion conduction in a LiBH4-SiO2 solid electrolyte.

We have developed a fast solid state Li ion conductor composed of LiBH4 and SiO2 by means of interface engineering. A composite of LiBH4-SiO2 was simply synthesized by high energy ball-milling, and two types of SiO2 (MCM-41 and fumed silica) having different specific surface areas were used to evaluate the effect of the LiBH4/SiO2 interface on the ionic conductivity enhancement. The ionic condu...

Computer simulation of a model for irreversible gelation

A random mixture of bifunctional and tetrafunctional units is placed on a simple cubic lattice. Permanent bonds between these units are then formed by the random motion of active centres (radicals) resulting in a model for the gelation of polyacrylamide and similar processes. The largest of the clusters formed by this kinetic percolation process is identified with the gel fraction, the ‘mean cl...