at the atomic scale,” said Maria Forsyth, a chemist at Deakin University in Australia. “You need to understand how the lithium ions move within the material.”
Most lithium-ion batteries use a liquid electrolyte that can be flammable and prone to catching fire. This research could lead to the development of solid-state lithium batteries that are safer and have higher energy density, according to the scientists.
Eugene Mamontov, the leader of the ORNL Chemical Spectroscopy group, stated, “Polymer electrolytes won’t catch fire like liquid electrolytes do in lithium batteries.” The team utilized neutron technique to confirm computer simulations and settled a long-standing debate about the time it takes for lithium ions to escape the small cages formed by polymer electrolytes. This rate of ion release from solvation cages in polymer electrolytes affects the flow of energy through the battery. Polymer electrolytes could potentially allow for more energy-dense electrodes, such as lithium metal, leading to more powerful batteries.The discovery has the potential to revolutionize the way new battery materials are evaluated at ORNL. “Neutrons are incredibly sensitive to hydrogen, which is found in almost all electrolytes. This allowed us to observe how it moved within the system and gain a detailed understanding of polymer electrolyte dynamics. We wouldn’t have been able to determine the time and distance in any other way,” explained Naresh Osti, a neutron scattering scientist at ORNL.
“Naresh and Eugene’s analysis of neutron data from the experiment at ORNL has given us valuable insight into the confinement of lithium ions within polymer electrolytes. Our discovery has opened new doors for further research in this area.””Nitash Balsara, a professor of Electrochemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, suggests that this general approach will be applicable to liquid electrolytes,”
Journal Reference:
- Neel J. Shah, Chao Fang, Naresh C. Osti, Eugene Mamontov, Xiaopeng Yu, Jaeyong Lee, Hiroshi Watanabe, Rui Wang, Nitash P. Balsara. Nanosecond solvation dynamics in a polymer electrolyte for lithium batteries. Nature Materials, 2024; DOI: <a href=”http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41563-024-01834-y“