A New Method to Prepare Stable Polyaniline Dispersions for Highly Loaded Cathodes of All-Polymer Li-Ion Batteries

A new method for the preparation of polyaniline (PANI) films that have a 2D structure and can record high active mass loading (up to 30 mg cm^-2) via acid-assisted polymerization in the presence of concentrated formic acid was developed. This new approach represents a simple reaction pathway that proceeds quickly at room temperature in quantitative isolated yield with the absence of any byproducts and leads to the formation of a stable suspension that can be stored for a prolonged time without sedimentation. The observed stability was explained by two factors: (a) the small size of the obtained rod-like particles (50 nm) and (b) the change of the surface of colloidal PANI particles to a positively charged form by protonation with concentrated formic acid. The films cast from the concentrated suspension were composed of amorphous PANI chains assembled into 2D structures with nanofibrillar morphology. Such PANI films demonstrated fast and efficient diffusion of the ions in liquid electrolyte and showed a pair of revisable oxidation and reduction peaks in cyclic voltammetry. Furthermore, owing to the high mass loading, specific morphology, and porosity, the synthesized polyaniline film was impregnated by a single-ion conducting polyelectrolyte-poly(LiM_n-r-PEGM_m) and characterized as a novel lightweight all-polymeric cathode material for solid-state Li batteries by cyclic voltammetry and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy techniques.