Study of MC:DN-Based Biopolymer Blend Electrolytes with Inserted Zn-Metal Complex for Energy Storage Devices with Improved Electrochemical Performance

Abstract

Stable and ionic conducting electrolytes are needed to make supercapacitors more feasible, because liquid electrolytes have leakage problems and easily undergo solvent evaporation. Polymer-based electrolytes meet the criteria, yet they lack good efficiency due to limited segmental motion. Since metal complexes have crosslinking centers that can be coordinated with the polymer segments, they are regarded as an adequate method to improve the performance of the polymer-based electrolytes. To prepare plasticized proton conducting polymer composite (PPC), a simple and successful process was used. Using a solution casting process, methylcellulose and dextran were blended and impregnated with ammonium thiocyanate and zinc metal complex. A range of electrochemical techniques were used to analyze the PPC, including transference number measurement (TNM), linear sweep voltammetry (LSV), cyclic voltammetry (CV), galvanostatic charge–discharge (GCD), and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS). The ionic conductivity of the prepared system was found to be 3.59 × 10−3 S/cm using the EIS method. The use of glycerol plasticizer improves the transport characteristics, according to the findings. The carrier species is found to have ionic mobility of 5.77 × 10−5 cm2 V−1 s−1 and diffusion coefficient of 1.48 × 10−6 cm2 s−1 for the carrier density 3.4 × 1020 cm−3. The TNM revealed that anions and cations were the predominant carriers in electrolyte systems, with an ionic transference value of 0.972. The LSV approach demonstrated that, up to 2.05 V, the film was stable, which is sufficient for energy device applications. The prepared PPC was used to create an electrical double-layer capacitor (EDLC) device. The CV plot exhibited the absence of Faradaic peaks in the CV plot, making it practically have a rectangular form. Using the GCD experiment, the EDLC exhibited low equivalence series resistance of only 65 Ω at the first cycle. The average energy density, power density, and specific capacitance values were determined to be 15 Wh/kg, 350 W/kg, and 128 F/g, respectively.