Performance‑tuning of PVA‑based gel electrolytes by acid/PVA ratio and PVA molecular weight

摘要

The significant breakthroughs of flexible gel electrolytes have attracted extensive attention in modern wearable electronicgadgets. The lack of all-around high-performing gels limits the advantages of such devices for practical applications.To this end, developing a multi-functional gel architecture with superior ionic conductivity while enjoying goodmechanical flexibility is a bottleneck to overcome. Herein, an architecturally engineered gel, based on PVA and H3PO4with different molecular weights of PVA for various PVA/H_3PO_4 ratios, was developed. The results show the dependenceof ionic conductivity on molecular weight and also charge carrier concentration. Consequently, fine-tuning of PVA-basedgels through a simple yet systematic and well-regulated strategy to achieve highly ion-conducting gels, with the highestionic conductivity of 14.75 ± 1.39 mS cm~(-1) have been made to fulfill the requirement of flexible devices. More importantly,gel electrolytes possess good mechanical robustness while exhibiting high-elasticity (%766.66 ± 59.73), making it anappropriate candidate for flexible devices.