Issue 9/2020 - Qingdao Energy prepares solid electrolyte from nylon 6

Recently, the Qingdao Bioenergy and Process Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences prepared a solid electrolyte from nylon 6, and the research results were published online in Advanced Functional Materials.

This work provides new ideas for the application of traditional polymers, which is expected to be generalized to classical polymers such as cellulose, lignin, and chitosan
.

After nearly two years of hard work, the team and collaborators used solid-state NMR, small-angle X-ray scattering, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and Raman spectroscopy to analyze the dissolution mechanism of nylon 6 in high-concentration lithium brine solution and the microscopic
configuration of the newly regenerated nylon polymer electrolyte.
They found that in a highly concentrated salt solution, anions participate in the solvation composition of cations, making the Lewis acidity of cations exert themselves
.
This highly Lewis acidic cation "attacks" the acyl group in the amide bond and coordinates to dissolve
nylon 6.
On the other hand, while the anion and the cation are associated, they are also bound to the amine group in the form of weak hydrogen bonds, forming a cross-linked network structure
.