Flame-Retardant, Highly Conductive, and Low-Temperature-Resistant Organic Gel Electrolyte for High-Performance...

Traditional liquid electrolytes are volatile, flammable, and easy to leak, which makes the energy storage device easy to burn and explode in the case of overcharge and short circuit. Here, by utilizing the active P-H bond of a flame retardant (DOPO) to graft onto the polymer chain, flame-retardant organic gel electrolytes were fabricated to address these issues. The gel electrolyte had good ionic conductivity of 4 mS cm^-1 at 20 °C and good flame retardant ability. By changing the molar ratio of the monomers and the salt concentrations, the mechanical strength of the gel electrolyte could be adjusted (maximum stress≈28 KPa, maximum strain≈305 %). The transport mechanism of lithium ions in the gel polymer electrolyte was proposed. The gel electrolyte-assembled supercapacitor (SC) possessed better electrochemical properties than that of SC assembled by liquid electrolyte. Importantly, the gel-based SC remained basically unchanged under multiple bending cycles. Additionally, the gel electrolyte had good low-temperature tolerance (0.1 mS cm^-1 at -40 °C). The gel electrolyte-assembled SC could work normally in the temperature range of -20 to 60 °C. The multiple advantages of gel electrolyte expand the applications in ionic conductor and energy storage devices.