Electrical and structural characteristics of fish skin gelatin as alternative biopolymer electrolyte

Abstract This article presented new sequences of fish gelatin (FG) as a polymer host for solid polymer electrolytes (SPEs) impregnated with ammonium nitrate (NH 4 NO 3 ) and the impact of different amounts of salt on the properties of the formed electrolyte were investigated. X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis revealed that the electrolyte containing 25 wt.% NH 4 NO 3 salt to be the most amorphous in nature. Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy analysis showed that the peak of amide III shifted to a lower wavenumber as salt increased to 25 wt.%, indicating the occurrence of interaction between the salt and polymer. The effect of variation amount of salt on the film morphology was studied using FESEM. The ionic conductivity of the undoped pure FG film at room temperature recorded a maximum value of 1.52 ± 0.30 × 10 − 5 S cm − 1 at 25 wt.% NH 4 NO 3 and the activation energy dropped to 0.454 eV. All electrolytes showed a linear conductivity-temperature plot at elevated temperatures, indicating that they all follow the Arrhenius rule. All of the electrolytes used in this study are non-Debye type, according to dielectric analysis. The findings provided in this article could help to improve the usage of FG as an alternate source of SPE in electrochemical power sources as a replacement for hazardous electrolytes.