Ion Transport in Polymer Electrolytes: Building New Bridges between Experiment and Molecular Simulation

Abstract

Polymer electrolytes constitute a promising type of material for solid-state batteries. However, one of the bottlenecks for their practical implementation lies in the transport properties, often including restricted Li⁺ self-diffusion and conductivity and low cationic transference numbers. This calls for a molecular understanding of ion transport in polymer electrolytes in which molecular dynamics (MD) simulation can provide both new physical insights and quantitative predictions. Although efforts have been made in this area and qualitative pictures have emerged, direct and quantitative comparisons between experiment and simulation remain challenging because of the lack of a unified theoretical framework to connect them.

In our work, we show that by computing the glass transition temperature (T_g) of the model system and using the normalized inverse temperature 1000/(T – T_g + 50), the Li⁺ self-diffusion coefficient can be compared quantitatively between MD simulations and experiments. This allows us to disentangle the effects of T_g and the polymer dielectric environment on ion conduction in polymer electrolytes, giving rise to the identification of an optimal solvating environment for fast ion conduction.

Unlike Li⁺ self-diffusion coefficients and ionic conductivity, the transference number, which describes the fraction of current carried by Li⁺ ions, depends on the boundary conditions or the reference frame (RF). This creates a non-negligible gap when comparing experiment and simulation because the fluxes in the experimental measurements and in the linear response theory used in MD simulation are defined in different RFs. We show that by employing the Onsager theory of ion transport and applying a proper RF transformation, a much better agreement between experiment and simulation can be achieved for the PEO–LiTFSI system. This further allows us to derive the theoretical expression for the Bruce–Vincent transference number in terms of the Onsager coefficients and make a direct comparison to experiments. Since the Bruce–Vincent method is widely used to extract transference numbers from experimental data, this opens the door to calibrating MD simulations via reproducing the Bruce–Vincent transference number and using MD simulations to predict the true transference number.

In addition, we also address several open questions here such as the time-scale effects on the ion-pairing phenomenon, the consistency check between different types of experiments, the need for more accurate force fields used in MD simulations, and the extension to multicomponent systems. Overall, this Account focuses on building new bridges between experiment and simulation for quantitative comparison, warnings of pitfalls when comparing apples and oranges, and clarifying misconceptions. From a physical chemistry point of view, it connects to concentrated solution theory and provides a unified theoretical framework that can maximize the power of MD simulations. Therefore, this Account will be useful for the electrochemical energy storage community at large and set examples of how to approach experiments from theory and simulation (and vice versa).