Effect of Polymerized Ionic Liquid Structure and Morphology on Shockwave Energy Dissipation

The ability of nanosegregated polymerized ionic liquids (PILs) to dissipate shockwave energy is investigated for a series of imidazolium-based PILs with varying alkyl spacer length. The PILs are designed to have similar glass transition temperatures but different structures. X-ray scattering analysis reveals that each of the amorphous PILs exhibit distinct nanoscale structural heterogeneity, depending on the length of the chain spacer. We find that a higher structural heterogeneity, determined from the intensity of the intercluster scattering peak, in the PILs with longer alkyl spacers results in greater shockwave energy dissipation. In addition, we observe the crystalline phase is less effective at dissipating shockwave energy than the amorphous phase due to the close packed morphology and slow kinetics.