They would greatly increase vehicle range, cost less than current designs and run more safely, since the electrolyte is nonflammable.
“An exciting new generation of battery types for electric vehicles beyond lithium ion is on the horizon,” said Zhengcheng Zhang, a group leader in Argonne’s Chemical Sciences and Engineering division.offer twice or more energy stored in a given volume or weight compared to lithium ion. They could power cars for much longer distances and could even power long-haul trucks and aircraft one day. The expectation is that widespread use of such batteries will help address the problem of climate change.
The team’s solution involved changing the electrolyte, a liquid through which lithium ions move between cathode and anode to implement charge and discharge. In lithium metal batteries, the electrolyte is a liquid consisting of a lithium-containing salt dissolved in a solvent. The source of the short cycle-life problem is that the electrolyte does not form an adequate protective layer on the anode surface during the first few cycles.
To better understand the mechanism behind this difference at the atomic scale, the team drew upon the high performance computing resources of the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility , a DOE Office of Science user facility.revealed that the fluorine cations stick to and accumulate on the anode and cathode surfaces before any charge-discharge cycling. Then, during the early stages of cycling, a resilient SEI layer forms that is superior to what is possible with previous electrolytes.