New lithium conducting ionomers based on commercial polyethers were synthesized by chemical modification in order to incorporate not only the anionic function on the polymer backbone but also polar aprotic and (or) protic groups improving both the salt dissociation and the anion-solvating ability of the multifunctional copolymers. The choice of environmentally friendly rather than perfluorinated anionic functions did not appear to compromise for the ionic conductivity. Lastly, the preliminary results on the use of an electrochemically stable and relatively cheap additive sparteine appear promising and could be generalized to a variety of polymer electrolytes for lithium batteries. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.