Grant: Alliance Grants

The partnership between the university of Ottawa and Trusscore Inc. is to increase the potential of electrochromic devices through the development polymer electrolytes that are safer, easier to manufacture and lead to less device failure. As a bias is applied, conduction through the electrolyte activates the electrochromic material, creating a change in colour. Electrochromic devices currently use solution-based electrolytes which are problematic as they often lead to product failure due to loss of stability and are often toxic which is problematic if a leak occurs. Building on our recent successes we propose to synthesize and optimize poly(ionic liquid) based block copolymers by semi-batch nitroxide mediated polymerization to act as safer, and higher performing polymer electrolytes. Nitroxide mediated polymerization is an industrially relevant synthetic technique and through a semi-batch approach we will target reduction in the synthetic complexity and increase the potential for commercialization. Through iterative design and constant feedback from the Trusscore team on the manufacturability, integration and device performance we will continuously improve the design of our polymers to ensure the required criteria are met or surpassed.