Investigation of Ion Transport Properties of Stockmayer-Type Polymers

In recent work [ACS Macro Lett. 2018, 7, 1149-1154], we explored the role of polymer host polarity on ionic conductivity using the Stockmayer model of polar fluids applied to a coarse-grained Kremer-Grest polymer. In this model, a freely rotating electric dipole moment is embedded in each monomer bead. We found that the ionic conductivity maximized at some intermediate host polarity, as measured by the monomeric point dipole moment strength. We demonstrated that this maximization arises from a tradeoff between reduced ionic aggregation and slowed segmental dynamics as the host polarity increased. In this work, we investigate the influence of salt concentration, temperature, and host molecular weight on ionic conductivity and the nonmonotonic variations with the polarity of the host polymer medium.