Macromolecules, Vol.38, No.15, 6485-6491, 2005
Ionic diffusion mechanism of glucitol-containing lithium polymer electrolytes
We investigated restricted diffusion of ionic species in glucitol-type lithium polymer electrolytes by observing echo-intensity changes of pulsed gradient spin echo NMR which reflect carrier diffusion behavior. Echo attenuation showed an anomalous feature attributable to deviation from random walk migration due to the restricted diffusion. The attenuation behavior depended on the diffusion time for measurement, Delta, in the range of 40 ms < Delta < 160 ms. This revealed that the size of the boundary structure which causes diffusion restriction was micrometer order. We speculated that a kind of micron size domain, which is an aggregation unit of entangled polymer chains, is responsible for the diffusion restriction. Simulations based on a rectangular model showed characteristic features of echo-changing behavior against two dominant factors: inherent diffusion coefficient, D, and domain size, a, which depend on variable parameters, observed temperature, T, and salt concentration, C, of the polymer electrolyte. Estimated D and a of the anion species by fitting the experimental data to a restricted diffusion model increased with increasing T and C. On the other hand, D and a of the cation species showed decreasing tendency with increased T and C. This difference would be attributed to their migration mechanisms: The cation is attracted by oxygen sites and takes the hopping process from site to site along the polymer chain in migration, whereas anion is weakly attracted by the polymer, leading to the migration free from the site-hopping process. Coulombic effect would provide stronger restricted situation on the cation compared with that due to the morphological domain structure, leading to the anomalous change in restriction parameters.