RUI: Thiol-ene/yne Poly(ionic liquid) Networks for Separation and Electroactive Technologies

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NON-TECHNICAL SUMMARY:This RUI award supports fundamental research at Murray State University (MSU) in the area of electroactive materials while enhancing the education and training of undergraduate and high school students. The PIs will utilize a relatively novel, cost-effective, rapid-processing approach to prepare a library of polymers containing electrical charges with tunable thermal, mechanical, and conductive properties. Such charge-containing polymers have been implemented in a number of societally important applications, including batteries, fuel cells, power plant flue-gas separations, and pharmaceutical materials. From the polymer-property relationships established as a result of this work, the principal investigators (PIs) will explore the applicability of these new materials in carbon dioxide separation/capture, ion-sensing devices, and in the formation of electroactive fibers. The challenging work proposed here will be performed primarily by a team of undergraduate students from the rural counties of far-western Kentucky and surrounding communities with participation also of local high school students. Student participants will receive a rewarding, cutting-edge research experience that will deepen their understanding of and appreciation for scientific research, thus better preparing them for STEM-related majors, careers and/or pre-professional school. In addition to the hands-on laboratory training and education that these students will receive, the PIs will explore how the techniques/data acquired from this proposal will be used to develop new laboratory experiments to supplement current course offerings in organic, analytical, and polymer chemistry,and will further enhance the new Polymer and Materials Science degree track offered by the Department of Chemistry at MSU. TECHNICAL SUMMARY: This RUI award focuses on the development of a new class of poly(ionic liquid) (PIL) materials utilizing thiol-ene/yne click-photopolymerization with a strong focus on how changes in monomer structure and stoichiometry affect the thermal, mechanical, and conductive properties of the resulting PIL networks. The underlying hypothesis of this project is that thiol-ene/yne photopolymerization represents a significant advancement in the formation of solventless, one-part, homogeneous PIL networks due to the rapid and robust nature of the chemistry and the variability that exists with careful modification and selection of monomers. Specifically, fundamental structure-activity relationships will be established by varying the cation, anion, and thiol structures of the starting ionic liquid monomers and analyzing material properties such as glass transition temperature, thermal stability, crosslink density and ionic conductivity. Additionally, FTIR experiments will be conducted in order to explore how structural changes affect polymerization kinetics, as well as dielectric relaxation spectroscopy to elucidate the roles that chain dynamics and ion mobility play on the conductivities of the networks. Once fundamental relationships and kinetics are established, the PIs will explore the potential impact of these thiol-ene/yne PIL materials on a variety of important applications, including carbon dioxide separation/capture, as microchip electrophoresis devices for support of electro-osmotic flow, as membranes in ion-selective electrodes,and as electroactive fibers from electrospinning. The award will support a large number of undergraduate STEM students from the far-western Kentucky region and several local high school students, thereby expanding the educational impact and outreach of the university and department while enhancing the ability of the participating students to pursue a STEM-related career. Synthetic approaches, materials analyses and applications will provide student participants with rewarding research experiences, all while generating results that will be disseminated in internationally recognized, peer-reviewed journals and presented at professional meetings.