Scientific Achievement
Lithium metal is an ideal battery anode. However, dendrite growth and limited CE during cycling have limited its practical applications. High CE (up to 99.1%) without dendrite growth is achieved by using highly concentrated electrolytes for lithium plating/stripping.
Significance and Impact
Highly concentrated electrolytes enable high-rate cycling of a lithium metal anode at high CE without dendrite growth, which may enable practical applications for lithium metal anode in rechargeable batteries.
Research Details
- We developed a highly concentrated electrolyte, 4 M lithium bis(fluorosulfonyl)imide in 1,2-dimethoxyethane, which could offer high CE and prevent dendrite growth for high rate cycling of lithium anode.
- MD simulation indicate that the increased solvent coordination and increased availability of lithium ion concentration largely enhanced the stability of the selected electrolyte.
Work performed at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (JCESR partner), Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory, U.S. Army Research Laboratory, by J. Qian, W. Henderson, W. Xu, P. Bhattacharya, M. Engelhard, O. Borondin and J. G. Zhang. Nat. Comm., 2015, 6, 6362. DOI: 10.1038/ncomms736
