Charge transport and polymer dynamics
 

Our research focuses in general on microscopic dynamics in disordered materials, with particular interests in charge transport, thermodynamics and hydrodynamics of polymeric materials, physics of hydrogen-bonded materials, and nonlinear phenomena in disordered ionic conductors. The following questions are guiding our current investigations:

• What are the microscopic mechanism governing the charge transport in polymer matrices? Comparing the behavior of polymerized ionic liquids with that of their monomeric precursors, our goal is to unravel the role played by the covalent bonds on charge dynamics in highly concentrated electrolyte melts. In particular, we are interested on the influence of polymerization on electric conduction, viscoelastic behavior, ionic diffusivity, and dynamical freezing in associated with the glass transition in polyelectrolytes. In our view such an intermixed study confers different perspectives on charge transport in disordered environments, thus paving new roads for a rational design of energy-storage materials.
• How do electric, mechanical, and calorimetric properties of polymers change when the covalent bonds are progressively replaced by hydrogen bonds? Our strategy is to investigate the interplay between covalent and hydrogen-bonded networks in blends of associating polymers with monohydroxy alcohols. Aiming at revealing fundamental aspects of self-healing, memory effects of associating polymers and, at the same time, of the self-organization in H-bonded materials, our study considers tuning the concentration, chain length, polarity of polymeric segments, and the ability of alcohols to sustain H-bonded structures with different morphologies.
• What are the mechanisms controlling the amplitude and the characteristic time scale of nonlinear conductivity effects in ionic materials? Considering the feasible perspective of nanostorage devices operating under nonlinear conditions (e.g., nanobatteries), we are focusing on the effects arising in disordered materials under high power density conditions. Since admixture of salt to polymer matrices and the increase in the chain length of polymerized ionic liquids grant the opportunity of a tailored dynamical decoupling between ions and their structural framework, our goal is to check how the nonlinear conduction phenomena emerge in these materials.