Novel Stable Gel Polymer Electrolyte: Toward a High Safety and Long Life Li–Air Battery

Abstract

Nonaqueous Li-air battery, as a promising electrochemical energy storage device, has attracted substantial interest, while the safety issues derived from the intrinsic instability of organic liquid electrolytes may become a possible bottleneck for the future application of Li-air battery. Herein, through elaborate design, a novel stable composite gel polymer electrolyte is first proposed and explored for Li-air battery. By use of the composite gel polymer electrolyte, the Li-air polymer batteries composed of a lithium foil anode and Super P cathode are assembled and operated in ambient air and their cycling performance is evaluated. The batteries exhibit enhanced cycling stability and safety, where 100 cycles are achieved in ambient air at room temperature. The feasibility study demonstrates that the gel polymer electrolyte-based polymer Li-air battery is highly advantageous and could be used as a useful alternative strategy for the development of Li-air battery upon further application.

Recent Advances in Non‐Aqueous Electrolyte for Rechargeable Li–O2 Batteries

“…The cell exhibited a dramatically decreased overpotential and high energy efficiency ( Figure 28 ), wherein the benefits were predominantly attributed to the elaborately made interfacial engineering with a LiI redox mediator decorated polymer electrolyte . Moreover, they also first proposed a novel stable composite gel polymer electrolyte for Li‐air battery with enhanced cycling stability and safety . In order to build a stable interface for the Li anode, a protection layer is required to stop the O 2 and soluble cathode byproducts crossover and suppress the growth of dendritical lithium upon cycling.…”

High Ion‐Conducting Solid‐State Composite Electrolytes with Carbon Quantum Dot Nanofillers

“…Unfortunately, its intrinsically low ionic conductivity (10 −7 –10 −6 S cm −1 ) originating from sluggish polymer chain dynamics upon crystallization restricts practical application 6. A variety of strategies, including the introduction of liquid plasticizers to produce a gel polymer electrolyte,7 the formation of block copolymers,8 crosslinking polymers9 and the addition of ceramic fillers2, 10 have been employed to increase the ionic conductivity of polymer electrolytes. Among these techniques, incorporating nanoscale fillers into the polymer matrix is attractive due to significant enhancement of the ion transport efficiency without sacrificing mechanical strength and electrochemical and thermal stability.…”

High‐Performance Lithium–Air Battery with a Coaxial‐Fiber Architecture

“…Moreover, a high ionic conductivity of 1.15 mS cm −1 at 298 K was obtained (Figure S3). Note that the ionic conductivity exceeds the previous solid electrolyte (10 −5 to 10 −1 mS cm −1 ), which was derived from the high ion transferability of TMPET. Importantly, the gel electrolyte protected the lithium anode from corrosion by water, nitrogen, oxygen, water vapor, and carbon dioxide in the air.…”