Before Li Ion Batteries

Abstract

This Review covers a sequence of key discoveries and technical achievements that eventually led to the birth of the lithium-ion battery. In doing so, it not only sheds light on the history with the advantage of contemporary hindsight but also provides insight and inspiration to aid in the ongoing quest for better batteries of the future. A detailed retrospective on ingenious designs, accidental discoveries, intentional breakthroughs, and deceiving misconceptions is given: from the discovery of the element lithium to its electrochemical synthesis; from intercalation host material development to the concept of dual-intercalation electrodes; and from the misunderstanding of intercalation behavior into graphite to the comprehension of interphases. The onerous demands of bringing all critical components (anode, cathode, electrolyte, solid-electrolyte interphases), each of which possess unique chemistries, into a sophisticated electrochemical device reveal that the challenge of interfacing these originally incongruent components often outweighs the individual merits and limits in their own properties. These important lessons are likely to remain true for the more aggressive battery chemistries of future generations, ranging from a revisited Li-metal anode, to conversion-reaction type chemistries such as Li/sulfur, Li/oxygen, and metal fluorides, and to bivalent cation intercalations.

Artificial Intelligence Investigation of NMC Cathode Manufacturing Parameters Interdependencies

“…[1][2][3] The performance of LIBs is strongly correlated to their manufacturing process. In order to face the "bad apples" of these revolutions, such as pollution and climate change, the humankind urgently needs technologies able to transform efficiently renewable energies into electrical one, as well as devices to store it.…”

A compact inorganic layer for robust anode protection in lithium‐sulfur batteries

“…Batteries with high energy densities have been a long‐term pursuit in multiple fields, such as electric vehicles, unmanned drones, and portable electronics . Despite the great success of lithium‐ion batteries (LIBs) in the past 30 years, the energy density of LIBs is approaching the theoretical limit, providing a huge impetus for the research of emerging battery chemistries . Lithium‐sulfur (Li‐S) batteries have attracted worldwide attention in recent years because the combination of the most energy‐dense Li metal as anode and earth‐abundant, high‐specific capacity S as cathode creates an overwhelming theoretical energy density of 2600 Wh kg −1 .…”

Chemically Prelithiated Hard‐Carbon Anode for High Power and High Capacity Li‐Ion Batteries

“…These insufficiencies are intrinsically originated from the electrode‐active materials used in current LIBs. For example, graphitic carbon anodes served in present LIBs technology have a theoretical capacity of only 372 mAh g −1 (corresponding to a saturated lithium composition of LiC 6 ) and poor Li‐ion transport rate (10 −12 –10 −14 cm 2 s −1 ) due to their regular arrangement of graphite layers . To address this capacity insufficiency of the anode, significant efforts have been devoted in the past decade to develop Li‐storable alloy anodes such as silicon, phosphorus, and tin as high‐capacity alternatives to graphitic anode.…”

“…Aside from this larger utilizable capacity, HC has a larger interplanar distance (0.36–0.38 nm) than graphite (≈0.33 nm), which facilitates fast transport of Li ions in the graphitic lattices, thereby enabling high rate capability that is particularly desirable for power Li‐ion batteries. Despite these attractive advantages, HC has a serious drawback of low initial coulombic efficiency (ICE) of ≈60%–80%, arising from a large initial capacity loss, due to the large surface area of its disordered graphitic texture. This large initial capacity loss consumes the Li ions in the electrolyte and needs to be compensated by loading an excess amount of cathode material, thus considerably lowering its capacity advantage .…”