Enhancement of Lithium-Ion Transport in Poly(acrylonitrile) with Hydrogen Titanate Nanotube Fillers as Solid Polymer Electrolytes for Lithium-Ion Battery Applications

In the present work, we report the enhancement of lithium-ion dissociation and transport in poly(acrylonitrile) host promoted by the addition of hydrogen titanate nanotube fillers for solid polymer electrolytes. We show experimental and theoretical evidence of lithium perchlorate dissociation due to the presence of the acidic hydrogen titanate nanotubes embedded in the polymer matrix. We performed confocal Raman microscopy analysis to reveal the presence of lithium perchlorate dissociation at the interface of polymer and nanotube fillers. The large affinity of perchlorate anions at the hydrogen titanate nanotube surface, as envisaged from the ab initio molecular dynamics simulations, could be responsible for the enhancement of more than 2 orders of magnitude in the lithium conductivity, reaching similar to 4 X 10(-4) S.cm(-1) for a certain amount of nanotube fillers addition.