Performance investigation of supercapacitors with PEO-based gel polymer & ionic liquid electrolytes: Molecular Dynamics Simulation

TL;DR

This study uses molecular dynamics simulations to compare ionic liquid and polymer electrolytes in supercapacitors, revealing trade-offs in capacitance, energy storage, and mechanical stability, highlighting polymer electrolytes as promising alternatives.

Contribution

The paper provides a comparative analysis of liquid and solid polymer electrolytes in supercapacitors using molecular dynamics, emphasizing the advantages of polymer electrolytes.

Findings

Ionic liquid supercapacitors have higher differential capacitance.

Polymer electrolytes store more energy despite lower capacitance.

Polymer electrolytes exhibit greater mechanical stability.

Abstract

Due to the importance of using supercapacitors in electronic storage devices, improving their efficiency is one of the topics that has attracted the attention of many researchers. Choosing the proper electrolyte for supercapacitors is one of the most significant factors affecting the performance of supercapacitors. In this paper, two classes of electrolytes, i.e. liquid electrolyte (ionic liquid electrolyte) and solid electrolyte (polymer electrolyte) are compared by molecular dynamics simulation. We consider the polymer electrolyte in linear and network configurations. The results show that although ionic liquid-based supercapacitors have a larger differential capacitance, since they have a smaller operation voltage, the amount of energy stored is less than polymer electrolyte-based supercapacitors. Also, our investigations indicate that polymer electrolyte-based supercapacitors have more mechanical stability. Therefore, they can be considered a very suitable alternative to liquid electrolyte-based supercapacitors that do not have known liquid electrolyte problems and display better performance.