To support the ongoing transition to electric vehicles and reduce greenhouse emissions, engineers have been trying to develop batteries that can store more energy, while also operating safely and lasting for long periods of time. Typically, however, high-energy batteries entail longer charging times, which is not ideal for most real-world applications.
Researchers at the University of Maryland recently introduced new electrolytes with an electrochemical stability window that dynamically expands while a battery is charging. These electrolytes, introduced in a paper published in Nature Energy, proved promising for the development of fast-charging high-energy batteries with diverse compositions.
“We wanted to address a longstanding challenge in battery technology: the trade-off between fast charging and high energy density,” Chang-Xin Zhao, first author of the paper, told Tech Xplore.
“During fast charging, the electrode potential can exceed the electrochemical stability window of the electrolyte, leading to undesirable side reactions. We wondered—what if the electrolyte could dynamically respond to the charging process and expand its stable potential window in real time? That could be a promising way to overcome this limitation.”
The newly designed electrolytes draw inspiration from the so-called “salting-out” effect, which is rooted in phase equilibrium theory. This is a phase-separation that occurs when the addition of salt to a solution prompts some components to become less soluble (i.e., separating out of the solution).
“Interestingly, the charging process in a battery inherently generates salt concentration gradients in the electrolyte, which provides the necessary conditions for this effect to occur,” explained Zhao. “Building on this idea, we developed an electrolyte system that leverages such concentration-driven phase behavior to adaptively expand its stability window during operation.”
The self-adaptive electrolytes developed by the researchers have two characterizing features. The first is their ternary composition and associated “salting-out” behavior.
Each electrolyte is comprised…
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