Effect of Binder Architecture on the Performance of Silicon/Graphite Composite Anodes for Lithium Ion Batteries.

Although significant progress has been made in improving cycling performance of silicon-based electrodes, few studies have been performed on the architecture effect on polymer binder performance for lithium-ion batteries. A systematic study on the relationship between polymer architectures and binder performance is especially useful in designing synthetic polymer binders. Herein, a graft block copolymer with readily tunable architecture parameters is synthesized and tested as the polymer binder for the high-mass loading silicon (15 wt %)/graphite (73 wt %) composite electrode (active materials >2.

A Rayleighian approach for modeling kinetics of ionic transport in polymeric media.

We report a theoretical approach for analyzing impedance of ionic liquids (ILs) and charged polymers such as polymerized ionic liquids (PolyILs) within linear response. The approach is based on the Rayleigh dissipation function formalism, which provides a computational framework for a systematic study of various factors, including polymer dynamics, in affecting the impedance. We present an analytical expression for the impedance within linear response by constructing a one-dimensional model for ionic transport in ILs/PolyILs.