Two-dimensional silica enhanced solid polymer electrolyte for lithium metal batteries

Solid polymer electrolytes(SPEs)are promising substitutes for current flammable liquid electrolytes to achieve high-safety and high-energy-density lithium metal batteries.Polyethylene oxide(PEO)based solid polymer electrolytes have attracted increasing attention because of their excellent flexibility,manufacturability,light weight,and low-cost processing,while they often suffer from low ionic con-ductivity at room temperature,low lithium transference number and unsatisfactory interfacial resis-tance,which largely restrain their practical application.Herein,two-dimensional holey silica nanosheets(2D-HSN)as the fillers,together with LiNO_(3) as the electrolyte additive,are introduced in a PEO/poly(-vinylidene fiuoride-co-hexafluoropropylene)(PVDF-HFP)blended polymer matrix to obtain a SPE.The incorporation of HSN filler creates supplementary channels for lithium ion migration and lowers the crystallinity of the polymer,thereby facilitating the movement of lithium ions.The HSN-based SPE demonstrates higher ionic conductivity up to 3.7 x 10-4 S cm-1 at 30℃,larger Li+transference number close to 0.34,and more stable lithium plating/stripping than that without the fillers,and HSN can promote the formation of more stable solid electrolyte interphase(SEI)layer.The as-assembled LiFePO4||Li batteries deliver a high specific capacity of 159 mA h g-1 with the capacity retention of 95.5%after 200 cycles at 30℃,as well as superior rate performance and cycling stability compared to that using the blank SPE.

Integrated interconnected porous and lamellar structures realized fast ion/electron conductivity in high-performance lithium-sulfur batteries

The practical application of high-energy-density lithium-sulfur(Li-S)batteries have been highly praised for energy storage devices,while are largely hindered by the“shuttling effect”.Herein,core-shell carbon spheres composed of interlinked porous core and lamellar shell were designed to restrain the polysulfide shuttling.The microporous structure with pore size of around 1 nm effectively trap lithium polysulfides.Furthermore,the interconnected porous core shortens the ion transfer distance and the lamellar carbon shell endows the carbon spheres with fast electron conduction,finally facilitating polysulfide conversion kinetics.Therefore,the Li-S batteries with the carbon spheres as the interlayer show high discharge specific capacity of 1002 m Ah/g at 2 C with 574 m Ah/g remaining after 600 cycles,and high areal capacity of 5.48 m Ah/cm^(2) with sulfur loading of 4.67 mg/cm^(2) at 0.1 C.The corresponding pouch cells also exhibit stable cycling stability with an initial discharge specific capacity of 1082 m Ah/g at 0.1 C.