Conductivity enhancement by controlled percolation of inorganic salt in multiphase hexanoyl chitosan/polystyrene polymer blends

Abstract

Hexanoyl chitosan and polystyrene blends are immiscible by the elucidation of the glass transition temperature (T_g) as well as the viscometric and morphological analyses. Selective localization of the lithium salt in hexanoyl chitosan phase as the percolation pathway enhanced the conductivity in the blends as compared to the neat hexanoyl chitosan. The ionic conductivity of a polymer electrolyte is described by σ = enµ. Thus, estimation of charge carrier density (n) and mobility (μ) is important in order to assess the performance. In this work, these parameters are calculated using impedance spectroscopy and FTIR.

Keywords

hexanoyl chitosan / polystyrene / polymer electrolyte / conductivity / percolation pathway

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Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank the Universiti of Teknologi MARA and Ministry of Education Malaysia for supporting this work through grant FRGS/1/2014/SG06/UITM/02/1.

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2014 Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg