Y. X. Zuo

Symmetrical electrical double layer capacitors with ionic liquid potassium hydroxide (KOH)-based poly(acrylic acid) gel polymer electrolytes and activated charcoal electrodes were constructed and characterised. The optimised composition of gel polymer electrolytes exhibits high room temperature ionic conductivity of 0.46 S cm⁻¹ with good mechanical and dimensional stability, which is suitable for their application as electrolyte in electrical double layer capacitors. Analysis shows that the maximum value of capacitance was 0.343 F cm⁻², and this value corresponds to an energy density equal to 0.111 J cm⁻². Electrical double layer capacitor exhibits large capacitance and high energy density. The results indicate that the gel polymer electrolyte used in our study is promising and is suitable as a solid electrolyte for high-performance all-solid-state electrochemical devices.

In this paper, the self-assembly process of diblock copolymers confined in multi-walled cylindrical nanotubes is systematically investigated using a molecular dynamics (MD) method. The dependence of resultant morphologies on the degree of confinement and on the interaction strength between nanotubes and copolymers is studied comprehensively. When the wall surfaces are not preferential, results indicate that geometric confinement significantly influences copolymer conformations. In addition, the thickness of the helical lamellar structure increases with interaction strength and confinement size. In cases where the nanotubes are strongly attracted to one copolymer block, the confinement effect weakens as geometric space increases. Findings explain the dependence of chain conformation on the degree of confinement and the strength of surface preferences.