Development of anion conducting zeolitic imidazolate framework bottle around ship incorporated with ionic liquids

Imidazolium based ionic liquids (denoted BMIM-ILs) with the altering anions (OH − , HCO 3 − and AcO − ) as ionic carriers were synthesized and bottle around ship introduced into the cages of zeolite-type metal organic frameworks (ZIF-8) as porous host, resulting in a series of anion-containing composites (BMIM-ILs/ZIF-8) with anion conducting. Bottle around ship method could integrate with the superiorities of BMIM-ILs and ZIF-8 for more excelling conduction and quite eliminate IL leakage. Besides, the hybrid membranes combined BMIM-ILs/ZIF-8 as fillers with polymer blends consisting of polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) and polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) as matrix were assembled with varying weight percentages. The structures of the prepared composites and hybrid membranes were inspected. It should be noted that ZIF-8 encapsulating into BMIM-OH (6.8 × 10 −4  S cm −1 ) and BMIM-HCO 3 (1.08 × 10 −3  S cm −1 ) reveal two orders of magnitude increase in conductivity-values comparison to that of the parent framework (2.3× 10 −5  S cm −1 ) at 353 K and ∼98% relative humidity (RH). The hybrid membrane containing 30%BMIM-OH/ZIF-8 has the advantage in proton conductivity of 1.02 × 10 −3  S cm −1  at 353 K and ∼98% RH, which is 6.49 times higher than that of the ZIF-8/PVP/PVDF. The activation energies (E a ) of BMIM-OH/ZIF-8 and its hybrid membrane are calculated to be 0.15 eV and 0.23 eV, respectively. They could be regarded as a fast-ion conductor on the ground of high conduction and low activation energy, which make them bright outlooks and wonderful potential for electrochemical devices .