Highly conducting corn starch doped ionic liquid solid polymer electrolyte for energy storage devices

Abstract

In this study, a new biopolymer electrolyte (BPE) is successfully developed using corn starch complexed with ammonium iodide (NH4I) as host, and low viscosity ionic liquid 1-Ethyl, 3-Methyl Imidazolium Thiocyanate (EMImSCN), as a plasticizer. This ionic liquid doped BPE shows high ionic conductivity of the order 10−4 S/cm and electrochemical stability window more than 3 V, which is suitable for electrochemical application. The ionic transference number (tion) of 0.98 confirms the system to be predominantly ionic in nature. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) shows complex nature, while polarized optical microscopy (POM) gives us an idea about the semi-crystalline nature of BPE. Maximum conducting ionic liquid doped BPE sandwiched electric double layer capacitor (EDLC) and dye sensitize solar cell (DSSC) shows efficient performance.