Prescribing “Medicines” for Treating the Poor Performances of High-Voltage Li-Ion Batteries
Nowadays, the utilizations of rechargeable lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) are spreading quickly from small-sized portable electronic devices to large-scale electric transportation tools and renewable energy storage systems. As a result, people's dependence on high energy density LIBs keeps increasing. However, most of the newly developed high energy density battery systems always suffer from poor performances, such as poor cyclability and low safety.
Recently, Prof. CUI Guanglei’s research group (http://keyan.fxshe.com/) from Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology (QIBEBT), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), prescribed “Medicines” (electrolyte additives) for treating the poor performances effectively of a high-voltage LiNi0.5Mn1.5O4/graphite battery system with high energy density. It was rationally demonstrated that, the two functional additives of tris(trimethylsilyl) phosphite (TMSP) and 1,3-propanediolcyclic sulfate (PCS) could efficiently stabilize solid electrolyte interface (SEI) layers of both electrodes, making the cyclability of this battery system unprecedentedly high. Moreover, a third designed self-extinguishing flame-retardant additive of (ethoxy)-penta-fluoro-cyclo-triphosphazene (PFPN) was introduced for reducing the flammability of the electrolyte, guaranteeing the battery safety to some extent. This “medicines (additives) combination” strategy provided by this study was meaningful in the development of high-voltage LIBs. The related work was published in Advanced Energy Materials. This work was supported by the funding from “135” Projects Fund of CAS-QIBEBT Director Innovation Foundation, Think-Tank Mutual Fund of Qingdao Energy Storage Industry Scientific Research, Qingdao Key Lab of Solar Energy Utilization and Energy Storage Technology, the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. XDA09010105), National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51502319, 21473228), Shandong Provincial Natural Science Foundation (No.ZR2016BQ18)
Figure 1. The explanation of cover design: The official translation of Chinese idiom “Xuan Hu Ji Shi” into English is “Practise medicine in order to help the people”. The story of this Chinese idiom is “In ancient China, the itinerant doctors treated the illness people by prescribing their traditional Chinese medicine stored in bottle gourd, which was hung at their waist”. Later, this Chinese idiom was used to describe the doctors’ willingness to save the illness people. Here, this Chinese idiom is used to express the researchers’ willingness to save the earth home in peril by developing high energy/high power renewable-energy storage systems. (Image by XU Gaojie)
(Text by CUI Guanglei, XU Gaojie)
Contact:
Prof. CUI Guanglei, Ph.D,
Qingdao Institute of BioEnergy and Bioprocess Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Tel: 86-532-80662746
E-mail: cuigl@qibebt.ac.cn
