High-quality and low-cost solid electrolytes come out, safe "lithium" thinks that batteries are no longer far away

  Science and Technology Daily News (Reporter Wu Changfeng) A reporter learned from the University of Science and Technology of China on August 2 that the team of Professor Ma Cheng from the school designed and synthesized a solid electrolyte for lithium batteries that has both cost and performance advantages, thus breaking the solid electrolyte material. The bottleneck of production cost and comprehensive performance is difficult to achieve, making the commercialization of all-solid-state batteries no longer just an unattainable "lithium" idea.

Related results were published in "Nature·Communication".

  Traditional commercial lithium batteries use organic liquid electrolytes, and fire and explosion problems after thermal runaway have become a major safety hazard.

The solid electrolyte in solid-state batteries can prevent problems such as flammability, explosion, and leakage caused by liquid electrolytes.

However, the raw material cost of solid electrolyte is very high, which has become a huge challenge for its commercial manufacturing.

  To this end, Ma Cheng’s team designed and synthesized a new type of chloride solid electrolyte—lithium zirconium chloride, which inherited well in terms of ionic conductivity, deformability, and compatibility with high-voltage cathodes. The advantages of chloride solid electrolytes over other solid electrolytes, the cycle performance of all solid-state batteries composed of them, even far exceed similar batteries based on sulfide and oxide solid electrolytes.

  More importantly, this material successfully reduced the raw material cost at a thickness of 50 microns to $1.38 per square meter, which is far below the threshold of $10 per square meter to ensure the competitiveness of the all-solid-state battery market, while the cheapest before The corresponding cost of the chloride solid electrolyte is 23.05 US dollars per square meter, far exceeding this threshold.

In addition, lithium zirconium chloride remains stable when the humidity is as high as 5%, so its synthesis and storage conditions are not harsh, which further reduces production costs.

  This research result has laid a solid foundation for commercial mass production of all-solid-state batteries.

"The commercialization of all-solid-state lithium batteries will be of great significance to achieving the goal of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality." Ma Cheng said that in the field of new energy electric vehicles, all-solid-state lithium batteries may be the ultimate solution to safety issues.