Stable Conducting Polymer Electrochemical Devices Incorporating Ionic Liquids

摘要

Commercialization of conducting polymers electrochemical devices remains an elusive goal due to the performance limitations associated with the electrolyte systems that have been used to date. These limitations include poor environmental stability, slow switching speeds, and short lifetimes during cycling between different redox states. By employing the room temperature ionic liquid 1-butyl-3-methyl imidazolium tetrafluoroborate, [BMIM][BF_4], in the fabrication of a conducting polymer based electrochromic numeric display, we report greatly enhanced electrochemical stability with negligible polymer degradation (up to 1 million cycles) and fast switching speeds (100 ms) under ambient conditions without sacrificing the electrochemical performance of the device.