A novel liquid electrolyte for high voltage lithium batteries

Summary:

A novel liquid inorganic electrolyte for lithium batteries – alternative approach for high voltage cells
In the last decade, enormous breakthroughs were made in the Li-ion battery technology (LIBT) by which LIBT dominated in the rechargeable battery market. The approaches in enhancing the energy density push the batteries to their limits, that triggers the urgent need for high voltage electrolyte. The electrolyte oxidation due to overcharging and reduced safety of organic electrolyte Li-ion batteries during abusive failure conditions pose a technical barrier. There are potential solutions out there, but they are not necessarily a progress and therefore are not fitting into a progressive roadmap and will cause disruption.
The capacity of NMC materials is limited due to upper voltage limit of commercial organic electrolytes (up to 4.3V) and almost all the battery manufactures restrict the cycling window between 2.5-4.2V to improve the battery life which limits the energy density. Further, the group of NMC materials (NMC622, NMC811) shows an increase of capacity when the voltage is increased. To extend the electrochemical stability window through additives often lead to unintended negative impact on other cell properties.
We have developed a new class of inorganic liquid electrolyte, superior to conventional organic electrolyte, compatible with all class of electrode materials and compatible with traditional Li-ion battery production processes. We realized the bottlenecks of the current battery technology and addressing this problem with our novel inorganic, liquid electrolyte. We have demonstrated high voltage operation, extra-wide temperature range and high conductivity of the electrolyte. These electrolyte characteristics pave the way to explore high voltage and capacity cathode chemistry and high capacity anode chemistry to achieve higher energy density than conventional lithium-ion-batteries. The advantages of having high voltage electrolyte are as follows:
1. exploring fullest capacity of NMC electrode materials
2. eliminating the irreversible capacity loss due to electrolyte decomposition at higher potential resulting in improved coulombic efficiency
4. ensured safety due to higher overcharging tolerance limit and non-flammability.
5. feasibility testing of high voltage materials
6. developing new family of high voltage cathode materials with high specific capacities
7.. compatible with current production processes
The advantages of novel electrolyte will be demonstrated in experimental data from diverse experiments such as performance at wide temperature range, voltage stability up to 5 V and ionic conductivity.