A conductive polymer coating known as HOS-PFM, developed by Berkeley Lab researchers, may enable more powerful, long-lasting lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles.
“The advance opens up a new approach to developing EV batteries that are more affordable and easy to manufacture,” said Gao Liu, Berkeley Lab’s senior scientist in energy technology.
The HOS-PFM coating conducts both electrons and ions at the same time. This ensures battery stability and high charge/discharge speed while extending battery life. The coating also shows promise as a battery adhesive that could extend the life of a lithium-ion battery from an average of 10 years to about 15 years, Liu added.
To demonstrate the superior conductive and adhesive properties of HOS-PFM, Liu and his team coated HOS-PFM aluminum and silicon electrodes and tested their performance in a lithium-ion battery setting.
Silicon and aluminum are promising electrode materials for lithium-ion batteries due to their potentially high energy storage capacity and lightweight profiles. However, these cheap and abundant materials wear out quickly after a few charge/discharge cycles.
During experiments at the Advanced Light Source and Molecular Foundry, the researchers demonstrated that the HOS-PFM coating significantly prevents the degradation of silicon-aluminum electrodes during battery cycling while providing high battery capacity for 300 cycles, a performance that is on par. with today’s most modern electrodes.
The results are impressive, Liu said, because silicon-based lithium-ion cells typically last for a limited number of charge/discharge cycles and calendar lifetimes. The researchers recently reported the findings in the journal Nature Energy.
The HOS-PFM coating could enable the use of electrodes containing up to 80 percent silicon. Such a high silicon content could increase the energy density of lithium-ion batteries by at least 30 percent, Liu said. And because silicon is cheaper than graphite, today’s standard material for electrodes, cheaper batteries could greatly increase the availability of basic electric vehicles, he added.
The team further plans to work with companies to scale up HOS-PFM for mass production. The Advanced Light Source and Molecular Foundry are DOE Office of Science user facilities at Berkeley Lab.
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