Effect of High Ammonium Salt Concentration and Temperature on the Structure, Morphology, and Ionic Conductivity of Proton-Conductor Solid Polymer Electrolytes Based PVA

Maryam A M Saeed; Omed Gh Abdullah

doi:10.3390/membranes10100262

Effect of High Ammonium Salt Concentration and Temperature on the Structure, Morphology, and Ionic Conductivity of Proton-Conductor Solid Polymer Electrolytes Based PVA

Membranes (Basel). 2020 Sep 28;10(10):262. doi: 10.3390/membranes10100262.

Authors

Maryam A M Saeed¹, Omed Gh Abdullah²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Physics, College of Science, University of Mosul, Mosul 41002, Iraq.
² Advanced Materials Research Lab., Department of Physics, College of Science, University of Sulaimani, Sulaymaniyah, Kurdistan Region 46001, Iraq.

Abstract

Polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) based proton-conducting solid polymer electrolyte was prepared with a high salt concentration of ammonium nitrate (NH₄NO₃) by the technique of solvent casting. From the X-ray diffraction studies, the semicrystalline nature of PVA with the inclusion of NH₄NO₃ was studied. XRD analysis indicates that the highest ion conductive sample exhibits the minimum crystalline nature. The decreasing trend of Jonscher-exponent with temperature rise reveals that the present system is insured by the correlated barrier hopping (CBH) model. The maximum room temperature conductivity was found to be 5.17 × 10^-5 S/cm for PVA loaded 30 wt.% of NH₄NO₃. The ionic transport of the proton-conducting solid polymer electrolyte was studied at the temperature range of 303-353 K. The conductivity-temperature relationship of the systems was analyzed using both the Arrhenius and Vogel-Tammann-Fulcher (VTF) models to explain the ionic hopping mechanism for the system.

Keywords: CBH; VTF; arrhenius; ionic conductivity; polymer electrolyte; proton conductor.