Effects of ionic liquids on cation dynamics in amorphous polyethylene oxide electrolytes

We perform extensive molecular dynamics simulations of a poly(ethylene oxide)-based polymer electrolyte material containing lithium bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl)imide salt for a wide temperature regime above and below the experimental crystallization temperature with and without N-methyl-N-propylpyrrolidinium bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl)imide ionic liquid (IL). The impact of the IL-concentration on the cation dynamics is studied. The increase of the cation mobility upon addition of IL is significant but temperature-independent. This can be related to distinct variations of the underlying transport properties as expressed within the previously introduced transport model of polymer electrolytes. Even for the largest IL concentration the transport model perfectly predicts the non-trivial time-dependence of the cationic mean square displacement for all temperatures. Finally, we compare our numerical and theoretical findings with the results of recent nuclear magnetic resonance experiments. In this way we can exclusively relate the strong experimentally observed dependence of the low-temperature Li-diffusivity on the IL concentration to the impact of IL on crystallization.