A Particle‐Controlled, High‐Performance, Gum‐Like Electrolyte for Safe and Flexible Energy Storage Devices

Abstract

Storing energy within flexible and safe materials is one of the most important goals for energy storage devices. To that end, high‐performance conformable electrolytes, which can transport ions quickly and safely, and can also effectively separate and bond strongly to the two electrodes, are of great importance. However, it is challenging to develop an electrolyte that can play these multiple roles simultaneously. Here, aiming to overcome this challenge, a particle‐based approach to the fabrication of a high‐performance, gum‐like electrolyte is described. The intriguing properties of the gum‐like electrolyte include high ionic conductivity, good mechanical properties, excellent adhesion properties, and, more importantly, thermal‐protection capability. It is shown that these significant properties are well‐controlled by the incorporation of wax particles with variable size, loading, and surface properties that can be designed through the use of an apporpriate surfactant. This provides a promising solution for high‐performance electrolytes and indicates a cost‐effective approach to fabricating multifunctional ion‐conducting materials.

A hybrid solid electrolyte for flexible solid-state sodium batteries

“…[29][30][31][35][36][37] Accordingly, the charge-discharge performance of a solid-state Na battery with HSE is comparable to that of a battery incorporating liquid electrolyte, and superior to that of a solid polymer electrolyte battery. The NASICON + PVdF-HFP composite film exhibits higher total E a , which indicates the high energy required to initiate the electrochemical process or charge transport.…”

Poly(Vinylidene Fluoride)‐Based Blends as New Binders for Lithium‐Ion Batteries

“…The most common co‐polymers of PVDF include poly(vinylidene fluoride‐tetrafluoroethylene‐propylene) (PVDF‐TFE‐P) and poly(vinylidene fluoride)‐co‐hexafluoropropylene (PVDF‐HFP) ,. From polymer science point of view, co‐polymerization can destroy the regularity of polymer structure, and therefore give rise to more amorphous phase that is beneficial to better adhesion ,. Besides the co‐polymer of PVDF, other new polymer binders with improved adhesion properties as compared with PVDF have also been widely studied.…”

“…The silicon electrode fabricated with this PEFM binder can retain more than 3000 mAh/g for more than 50 cycles while the best of other binder systems retained around 2000 mAh/g. Besides this chemical method on synthesis of dual‐conductive polymers on molecular level, we recently reported a physical method via design of a gum‐like polymeric nanocomposite to simultaneously achieve high ion‐ and electron‐conductivity, good mechanical flexibility and strong adhesion properties ,. In this case, the gum‐like nanocomposite can be viewed as a special electrode matrix material integrating the binder function.…”

“…[7,8] From polymer science point of view, co-polymerization can destroy the regularity of polymer structure, and therefore give rise to more amorphous phase that is beneficial to better adhesion. [9,[10][11][12] Besides the co-polymer of PVDF, other new polymer binders with improved adhesion properties as compared with PVDF have also been widely studied. For example, acrylic adhesive [13] , polyamide imide (PAI), [14] polyethylene oxide (PEO), [10,15,16] polyimide (PI), [17] poly(acrylic acid) (PAA), [18,19] poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA), [20] polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) [19][20][21] and polypropylene carbonate (PPC) [22][23][24][25] have been reported to have better adhesion than PVDF and resulted in higher capacity retention.…”

Temperature-responsive microspheres-coated separator for thermal shutdown protection of lithium ion batteries

“…6,7 To improve the safety of LIBs, shutdown separators typically having PP (polypropylene)/PE (polyethylene) bilayer or PP/PE/PP trilayer structure are commonly used as a fail-safe device in commercial cells. [12][13][14][15] To get a better safety control for LIBs, a number of strategies such as temperature-sensitive electrode materials, 16 positivetemperature-coefficient (PTC) electrodes, [17][18][19] and thermal shutdown electrode 20,21 and electrolyte [22][23][24][25] have been proposed as a self-activating protection mechanism to prevent the overheated cells from thermal runaway. However, this type of separator oen loses control to thermal runaway in practical applications, because the difference between the melting point of PE (135 C) and PP (165 C) is only 30 C, thermal inertia aer shutdown can easily cause the cell temperature to keep going onto the melting point of PP, resulting in shrinking of separator and then internal shortcircuiting of the electrodes.…”