Quantum chemistry and molecular dynamics simulation study of dimethyl carbonate: ethylene carbonate electrolytes...

Quantum chemistry studies of ethylene carbonate (EC) and dimethyl carbonate (DMC) complexes with Li+ and LiPF6 have been conducted. We found that Li+ complexation significantly stabilizes the highly polar cis-trans DMC conformation relative to the nearly nonpolar gas-phase low energy cis-cis conformer. As a consequence, the binding of Li+ to EC in the gas phase is not as favorable relative to binding to DMC as previously reported. Furthermore, quantum chemistry studies reveal that, when complexation of LiPF6 ion pairs is considered, the DMC/LiPF6 complex is about 1 kcal/mol more stable than the EC/LiPF6 complex. The EC3DMC(cis-cis)/Li+ complex was found to be the most energetically stable among ECnDMCm/Li+ (n+m=4) investigated complexes followed by EC4/Li+. Results of the quantum chemistry studies of these complexes were utilized in the development of a many-body polarizable force field for EC:DMC/LiPF6 electrolytes. Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of EC/LiPF6, DMC/LiPF6, and mixed solvent EC:DMC/LiPF6 electrolytes utilizing this force field were performed at 1 M salt concentration for temperatures from 298 to 363 K. Good agreement was found between MD simulation predictions and experiments for thermodynamic and transport properties of both pure solvents and the electrolytes. We find increased ion pairing with increasing DMC content; however, both EC and DMC were found to participate in Li+ solvation in mixed EC:DMC electrolytes despite a huge difference in their dielectric constants. In contrast to previous NMR studies, where dominance of EC in cation solvation was reported, we find a slight preference for DMC in the cation solvation shell for EC:DMC (1 wt:1 wt) electrolytes and show that reanalyzed Raman spectroscopy experiments are in good agreement with results of MD simulations. Finally, analysis of solvent residence times reveals that cation transport is dominated by motion with solvating DMC and approximately equal contributions from vehicular motions with the first solvation shell and solvent exchange with respect to solvating EC.