We probe the ion mobilities, transference numbers, and inverse Haven ratio of ionic liquids and polymerized ionic liquids as a function of their molecular weight using a combination of atomistic equilibrium and nonequilibrium molecular dynamics simulations. In contrast to expectations, we demonstrate that the inverse Haven ratio increases with increasing degree of polymerization (N) and then decreases at larger N. For a fixed center of mass reference frame, we demonstrate that such results arise as a consequence of the strong cation–cation correlated motions, which exceed (in magnitude) the self-diffusivity of cations. Together, our findings challenge the premise underlying the pursuit of pure polymeric ionic liquids as high transference number, single-ion conducting electrolytes.

We present the results of a multiscale simulation framework investigating the ion transport mechanisms in multicomponent polymerized ionic liquids. Three different classes of polymeric ionic liquid systems, namely, random copolymers, lamellae forming block copolymers, and homopolymers, are constructed at the coarse-grained scale, and their atomistic counterparts are derived by using a reverse mapping method. Using such a framework, we investigate the influence of morphology on ion transport properties of such polymerized ionic liquids. Our results for ion mobilities are in qualitative agreement with experimental observations. Further analysis of random copolymer and block copolymer systems reveal that the reduced ion mobilities in such systems arise from the influence of architecture and morphology on ion coordination and intramolecular hopping events.

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In this paper, we propose a new generic approach for reverse mapping from coarse-grained to atomistic scale based on the adaptive resolution scheme (AdResS). In AdResS simulation, two spatial domains, modeled at two different scales, are brought together in a concurrent simulation by defining a hybrid region where particles can switch representation from one model to another. We use AdResS as a central part of a reverse mapping algorithm from a different perspective by treating the whole simulation box as a hybrid region and changing the resolution as a function of time during the course of a molecular dynamics simulation. The proposed method depends only on a single parameter that controls the reverse mapping process and it is independent of atomistic and coarse-grained force-fields. We performed a reverse mapping of three different systems, simple molecules (dodecane), polymer chains (polyethylene) and ring molecules (trimethylol melamine) with a degree of coarse-graining ranging from two to ten heavy atoms. The conformational and dynamical properties of the reconstructed systems are in excellent agreement with the reference atomistic simulation.