CONDUCTIVITY STUDIES ON LITHIUM PERCHLORATE CONTAINING LIQUID AND GEL ELECTROLYTES
Electrical conductivity studies have been carried out on liquid and gel electrolytes of lithium perchlorate (LiClO4) in propylene carbonate (PC), ethylene carbonate (EC), dimethylacetamide (DMA), dimethylformamide (DMF) and their binary and ternary mixtures. Gel electrolytes were prepared by the addition of polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) to above liquid electrolytes in different weight ratios. The conductivity of electrolytes has been found to be of the order of mS/cm and it depends upon the solvent (single, binary, ternary) used and varies as σ(ternary) > σ(binary) > σ(single). Maximum room temperature conductivity of 1.2×10−2 S/cm is observed for liquid electrolytes using PC+EC+DMF in equal volume ratio as the solvent at 1M salt concentration. The variation of conductivity of gel electrolytes with polymer content and temperature has been found to be very small and is similar to that observed for the corresponding liquid electrolytes which suggest the liquid like behaviour of these polymer gel electrolytes.
