Doping of erbium(III) oxide nanoparticles–polymer interfaces in biodegradable inorganic solid polymer electrolytes for enhanced ionic conductivity

The severity of the environmental issue, caused by the heavy consumption of fossil fuel encourages the development of biodegradable energy storage devices. Electrolyte, which provides charge carriers, is one of the basic component in constructing an energy storage device. Hence, a solution casting technique has been adopted to prepare biodegradable inorganic solid polymer electrolyte (SPE) which contains hydroxylethyl cellulose (biodegradable host polymer), magnesium trifluoromethane sulfonate (charge carriers) and 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium trifluoromethane sulfonate ionic liquid (plasticizer). Unfortunately, it portrays low ionic conductivity which will lead to the drop in the performance of the energy storage device. Therefore, a study is conducted to observe the ionic conductivity of the SPE upon doping of various percentage of erbium(III) oxide (Er2O3) nanoparticles. It is found that the SPE doped with 2 wt. % erbium(III) oxide nanoparticles obtained the highest ionic conductivity at room temperature (4.02 x 10-4 S/cm). The result is well in agreement with the high dielectric permittivity owing to the great Lewis interaction between the charge carrier and nanoparticles.