Ionically Conductive Polyelectrolyte Multilayers for Microbattery Applications

聚电解质和其他多价有机和无机物种的交替吸附在过去的十年中已经发展成为一个快速发展的材料科学的新领域。多层组装技术包括从稀水或混合溶剂溶液中交替吸附相反电荷的物种，已被用于创建许多具有电、光、介电和电化学功能的体系。采用逐层组装技术可以制备出具有高均匀性的超薄膜。制造的简单性、在纳米尺度上控制薄膜结构的能力以及薄膜的最终性质的可调性使得聚电解液多层膜在微米级电池应用中成为有趣的元件。哈蒙德研究小组最近的工作产生了许多微制造技术，允许将功能聚合物多层膜结合到微米级器件中。这一组的新工作还通过使用高酸性多离子(如全氟磺化离聚体)和聚氧乙烷的加入，使聚电解质多层膜的固态离子电导率提高了数量级。这项工作的目标是开发适用于薄膜电池应用的具有离子导电性的新型聚电解质多层体系，利用多层组装工艺提供的纳米级控制来开发用于电池电极组件的具有梯度电子导电性的电解液薄膜，并应用本小组开发的非光刻微制造技术来在塑料、玻璃或纸衬底上制造廉价、易于制造的多层电池设备，用于塑料和纸薄膜电子应用。

The alternating adsorption of polyelectrolytes and other multivalent organic andinorganic species has evolved in the past decade into a quickly developing new field ofmaterials science. The multilayer assembly technique, which involves the alternatingadsorption of oppositely charged species from dilute aqueous or mixed solvent solutions,has been used to create a number of systems with electrical, optical, dielectric andelectrochemical functionality. Ultrathin films with high uniformity are can be createdusing layer-by-layer assembly techniques. The ease of fabrication, ability to control filmstructure on a nanometer length scale, and the tunability of the final properties of the filmmake polyelectrolyte multilayer approaches interesting as components in micron scalebattery applications. Recent work from the Hammond research group has resulted in anumber of microfabrication techniques that allow the incorporation of functional polymermultilayers into micron scale devices. New work in this group has also led to orders ofmagnitude increases in the solid state ionic conductivity of polyelectrolyte multilayerfilms through the use of highly acidic polyions such as perfluorosulfonated ionomers, andthe incorporation of polyethylene oxide. The goals of this work are to develop newpolyelectrolyte multilayer systems with ionic conductivities suitable for thin film batteryapplications, to take advantage of the nanometer scale control that multilayer assemblyprocesses provide to develop electrolyte films with gradient electronic conductivities forbattery electrode components, and to apply nonlithographic microfabrication techniquesdeveloped in this group to create cheap, easily manufactured multilayer battery deviceson plastic, glass or paper substrates for plastic and paper thin film electronicsapplications.