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Safe electrolyte for long-cycling alkali-ion batteries

Nature Sustainability volume 7, pages 326–337 (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

Safety is essential to battery sustainability, particularly considering that flammable organic molecules still dominate the electrolyte formulation. For a single electrolyte chemistry, improving its safety is often at the expense of cost and the battery’s electrochemical performance. Here we show an electrolyte that breaks this trade-off with combined flame retardancy, cost advantage and excellent cycling performance in both potassium-ion and lithium-ion batteries. Our rational design is to tame the flammability of a commonly used glyme solvent by introducing a fluorinated liquid and a non-polar solvent, known on the market as Novec 7300 coolant fluid and Daikin-T5216, respectively. The formulated electrolyte with excellent chemical and thermal stability proves non-flammable and works in a wide working temperature range of −75 to 80 °C. When assembled in potassium metal batteries, the K||K cell sustains cycling for >12 months, and the K||graphite cell retains 93% of its initial capacity after 2,400 cycles. Even in a 18650 Li-ion cell under harsh conditions (N/P = 1.08, E/C = 3.0 g Ah−1), the capacity retention is as high as 96.7% after cycling more than 200 times. Together with low cost, the current formulation suggests new space in electrolyte design where nearly all factors that matter to the sustainability of batteries can be well balanced.

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Fig. 1: Electrolyte designs.
Fig. 2: Characteristics, safety and theoretical study of the designed electrolyte.
Fig. 3: Electrochemical performance of K anodes.
Fig. 4: Long-term stability of graphite cells is enabled by a beneficial SEI chemistry.
Fig. 5: The high-voltage and full-cell properties.
Fig. 6: Universality, temperature sustainability and scalability of our tamed electrolyte.

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All relevant data are included in the paper and its Supplementary Information. Source data are provided with this paper.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by two grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. U20A20247 and 51922038 to B.L.). A.M.R. acknowledges the seed funding provided by the R. A. Bowen Endowed Professorship funds at Clemson University.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Physics and Electronics, Hunan University, Changsha, China

    Xianhui Yi, Hongwei Fu, Yingjiao Zhang & Bingan Lu

  2. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Clemson Nanomaterials Institute, Clemson University, Clemson, SC, USA

    Apparao M. Rao

  3. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Central South University, Changsha, China

    Jiang Zhou

  4. State Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Materials and Technologies, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China

    Chengxin Wang

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Contributions

B.L. conceived the project, and directed and supervised the work. X.Y. conducted the experiments and data analysis. H.F. conducted the DFT calculations and MD simulations. Y.Z. helped with XPS test. B.L. and X.Y. analysed the results and drafted the manuscript with H.F., A.M.R., Y.Z., J.Z. and C.W. All authors discussed and co-wrote the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Bingan Lu.

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Nature Sustainability thanks Tomooki Hosaka and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. 1–26, Tables 1–6, Videos 1–4 and References.

Reporting Summary

Supplementary Video 1

Fire-dousing test of spraying 1 M KFSI DME electrolyte onto an ignited candle to check the fire-extinguishing effect.

Supplementary Video 2

Fire-dousing test of spraying pure air onto an ignited candle to check the fire-extinguishing effect.

Supplementary Video 3

Fire-dousing test of spraying water onto an ignited candle to check the fire-extinguishing effect.

Supplementary Video 4

Fire-dousing test of spraying 1 M KFSI DME/MME-OOE electrolyte onto an ignited candle to check the fire-extinguishing effect.

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Yi, X., Fu, H., Rao, A.M. et al. Safe electrolyte for long-cycling alkali-ion batteries. Nat Sustain 7, 326–337 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-024-01275-0

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