Despite a 20-year effort, the development of solvent-free polymer electrolytes with a conductivity greater than 10^-3 Siemans/centimeter (10^-3 S/cm) at room temperature has remained an elusive goal in the development of safer, high energy density batteries for applications such as electric vehicle propulsion. A solution to this problem is provided by a class of novel composite electrolytes in which the high conductivity and good mechanical strength of inorganic glasses are complemented by the structural flexibility of organic polymers. The resulting glass-polymer composite electrolytes can be prepared as thin membranes with > 10-3 S/cm conductivity at 25°Centigrade. The Phase I project will involve the following tasks: (1) synthesis of composite electrolytes, (2) characterization of the electrolytes, and (3) testing of lithium solid polymer electrolyte cells.

Commercial Applications and Other Benefits as described by the awardee: Polymer electrolyte batteries are expected to be safer than their liquid electrolyte counterparts. Electric vehicle propulsion is a very important application for them. Other uses of polymer batteries are for consumer electronics such as cellular telephones, notebook computers, videocameras and pagers.