Enthusiasts believe lithium metal batteries built with ceramic separators offer longer battery life, and in some cases lighter form factors, as well as improved thermal stability largely due to the reduction of flammable liquids that are in contact with lithium metal. To understand why, look at basic battery structure.
ACerS member Richard Laine has been working on a scheme to use ceramics to improve even safer solid-state batteries, which completely do away with aqueous solutions altogether. Laine, along with his University of Michigan research group, recently published their findings in the Journal of Power Sources.
ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 23 October 2023. < / releases / 2023 / 10 / 231023124339.htm>. A lithium ceramic could act as a solid electrolyte in a more powerful and cost-efficient generation of rechargeable lithium-ion batteries. The challenge is to find a production method that works without sintering at high temperatures.
Lithium-ion batteries – like the one powering your phone and tablet right now -- feature a reducing anode (typically made of graphite) and an oxidizing cathode (made of lithium and other chemicals). A porous polymer separator containing liquid electrolyte prevents these two layers from touching.
Lithium metal batteries are also built-in layers. The solid electrolyte separator and anode layer – made of pure lithium metal as the name implies-- can also be very thin, making the battery smaller than lithium-ion batteries with the same energy (runtime or range).
A research team has now introduced a sinter-free method for the efficient, low-temperature synthesis of these ceramics in a conductive crystalline form. A lithium ceramic could act as a solid electrolyte in a more powerful and cost-efficient generation of rechargeable lithium-ion batteries.