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Enhancing ionic conductivity in composite polymer electrolytes with well-aligned ceramic nanowires

Nature Energy volume 2, Article number: 17035 (2017) Cite this article

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Abstract

In contrast to conventional organic liquid electrolytes that have leakage, flammability and chemical stability issues, solid electrolytes are widely considered as a promising candidate for the development of next-generation safe lithium-ion batteries. In solid polymer electrolytes that contain polymers and lithium salts, inorganic nanoparticles are often used as fillers to improve electrochemical performance, structure stability, and mechanical strength. However, such composite polymer electrolytes generally have low ionic conductivity. Here we report that a composite polymer electrolyte with well-aligned inorganic Li+-conductive nanowires exhibits an ionic conductivity of 6.05 × 10−5 S cm-1 at 30 ∘C, which is one order of magnitude higher than previous polymer electrolytes with randomly aligned nanowires. The large conductivity enhancement is ascribed to a fast ion-conducting pathway without crossing junctions on the surfaces of the aligned nanowires. Moreover, the long-term structural stability of the polymer electrolyte is also improved by the use of nanowires.

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Figure 1: The comparison of possible Li-ion conduction pathways.
Figure 2: Synthesis procedure and morphologies for the composite polymer electrolyte with aligned nanowires.
Figure 3: Conductivity results for the composite polymer electrolyte with ceramic nanowires.
Figure 4: Simulation analysis for the composite polymer electrolyte with aligned nanowires.

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Acknowledgements

This work is supported by Samsung Electronics.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, USA

    Wei Liu, Dingchang Lin, Feifei Shi & Yi Cui

  2. Geballe Laboratory for Advanced Materials, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, USA

    Seok Woo Lee

  3. Department of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, USA

    Shuang Wang

  4. Department of Applied Physics, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, USA

    Austin D. Sendek

  5. Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, 2575 Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park, California 94025, USA

    Yi Cui

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  1. Wei Liu
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Contributions

W.L. and Y.C. conceived the experiment and carried out data analysis. W.L. performed materials fabrication and characterization. S.W.L. performed the numerical simulation. D.L., F.S. and S.W. assisted in experimental work. A.D.S. assisted in language editing. W.L. and Y.C. wrote the paper. All the authors discussed the results and commented on the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Yi Cui.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Supplementary Figures 1–13, Supplementary Table 1, Supplementary Notes, Supplementary References. (PDF 1349 kb)

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Liu, W., Lee, S., Lin, D. et al. Enhancing ionic conductivity in composite polymer electrolytes with well-aligned ceramic nanowires. Nat Energy 2, 17035 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nenergy.2017.35

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