Exploring porous zeolitic imidazolate frame work-8 (ZIF-8) as an efficient filler for high-performance poly(ethyleneoxide)-based solid polymer electrolytes

The incorporation of inorganic fillers into poly(ethyleneoxide)(PEO)-based solid polymer electrolytes (SPEs) is well known as a low-cost and effective method to improve their mechanical and electrochemical properties. Porous zeolitic imidazolate framework-8 (ZIF-8) is firstly used as the filler for PEO-based SPEs in this work. Due to the introduction of ZIF-8, an ionic conductivity of 2.2 × 10−5 S/cm (30 °C) is achieved for the composite SPE, which is one order of magnitude higher than that of the pure PEO. ZIF-8 also accounts for the broader electrochemical stability window and lithium ion transference number (0.36 at 60 °C) of the composite SPE. Moreover, the improved mechanism of ZIF-8 to the composite SPE is investigated by zeta potential and Fourier transform infrared spectrograph characterizations. The stability at the composite SPE/lithium interface is greatly enhanced. The LiFePO4||Li cells using the composite SPE exhibit high capacity and excellent cycling performance at 60 °C, i.e., 85% capacity retention with 111 mA·h/g capacity retained after 350 cycles at 0.5 C. In comparison, the cells using the pure PEO show fast capacity decay to 74 mA·h/g maintaining only 68 capacity. These results indicate that the PEO-based SPEs with ZIF-8 are of great promise for the application in solid-state lithium metal batteries.