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Cellulose hydrogel as a flexible gel electrolyte layer

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Abstract

We report the synthesis of a novel polymer gel electrolyte primarily based on cellulose extracted from wood along with gelatin, polyacrylic acid (PAA) and potassium hydroxide (KOH) added as additives in minute amounts in various stages. We also study and report the variation of ionic conductivity with variation of various additives. We found that, with variation of additives to hydrogel, its stability and degree of crystallinity are varied. The results were confirmed using x-ray diffraction and Fourier transform infrared spectra studies. An average best ionic conductivity of 96.89mS/cm was reported for a hydrogel: gelatin: PAA: KOH system, which is one of the best reported values of ionic conductivity for gel electrolytes.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) for supporting this research from startup fund. The authors would also like to thank Scott Riley, Karla Negrete, Shiyani Patel, Ryan Lorence, Christopher Gruenke, and Sedzro Tamakloe for their contributions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, MD, 21250, USA

    Aswani Poosapati, Eunhwa Jang & Deepa Madan

  2. Department of Material Science and Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, 20740, USA

    Nathaniel Jang & Liangbing Hu

  3. Department of Physics, Morgan State University, Baltimore, MD, 21251, USA

    Yucheng Lan

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  1. Aswani Poosapati
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  2. Eunhwa Jang
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  3. Deepa Madan
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  4. Nathaniel Jang
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  5. Liangbing Hu
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  6. Yucheng Lan
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Correspondence to Deepa Madan.

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Poosapati, A., Jang, E., Madan, D. et al. Cellulose hydrogel as a flexible gel electrolyte layer. MRS Communications 9, 122–128 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1557/mrc.2019.9

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