In the previous paper Ralph Brodd and Martin Winter described the different kinds of batteries and fuel cells. In this paper I will describe lithium batteries in more detail, building an overall foundation for the papers that follow which describe specific components in some depth and usually with an emphasis on the materials behavior. The lithium battery industry is undergoing rapid expansion, now representing the largest segment of the portable battery industry and dominating the computer, cell phone, and camera power source industry. However, the present secondary batteries use expensive components, which are not in sufficient supply to allow the industry to grow at the same rate in the next decade. Moreover, the safety of the system is questionable for the large-scale batteries needed for hybrid electric vehicles (HEV). Another battery need is for a high-power system that can be used for power tools, where only the environmentally hazardous Ni/ Cd battery presently meets the requirements. A battery is a transducer that converts chemical energy into electrical energy and vice versa. It contains an anode, a cathode, and an electrolyte. The anode, in the case of a lithium battery, is the source of lithium ions. The cathode is the sink for the lithium ions and is chosen to optimize a number of parameters, discussed below. The electrolyte provides for the separation of ionic transport and electronic transport, and in a perfect battery the lithium ion transport number will be unity in the electrolyte. The cell potential is determined by the difference between the chemical potential of the lithium in the anode and cathode, ∆G ) -EF. As noted above, the lithium ions flow through the electrolyte whereas the electrons generated from the reaction, Li ) Li+ + e-, go through the external circuit to do work. Thus, the electrode system must allow for the flow of both lithium ions and electrons. That is, it must be both a good ionic conductor and an electronic conductor. As discussed below, many electrochemically active materials are not good electronic conductors, so it is necessary to add an electronically conductive material such as carbon * To whom correspondence should be addressed. Phone and fax: (607) 777-4623. E-mail: stanwhit@binghamton.edu. 4271 Chem. Rev. 2004, 104, 4271−4301

http://www.chemie.uni-regensburg.de/Anorganische_Chemie/Vortrag/StudentenWS06-07/Vortrag_Amereller.pdf

Lithium Batteries and Cathode Materials

Electrolytes and interphases in Li-ion batteries and beyond.

Alloying has long been used to confer desirable properties to materials. Typically, it involves the addition of relatively small amounts of secondary elements to a primary element. For the past decade and a half, however, a new alloying strategy that involves the combination of multiple principal elements in high concentrations to create new materials called high-entropy alloys has been in vogue. The multi-dimensional compositional space that can be tackled with this approach is practically limitless, and only tiny regions have been investigated so far. Nevertheless, a few high-entropy alloys have already been shown to possess exceptional properties, exceeding those of conventional alloys, and other outstanding high-entropy alloys are likely to be discovered in the future. Here, we review recent progress in understanding the salient features of high-entropy alloys. Model alloys whose behaviour has been carefully investigated are highlighted and their fundamental properties and underlying elementary mechanisms discussed. We also address the vast compositional space that remains to be explored and outline fruitful ways to identify regions within this space where high-entropy alloys with potentially interesting properties may be lurking. High-entropy alloys have greatly expanded the compositional space for alloy design. In this Review, the authors discuss model high-entropy alloys with interesting properties, the physical mechanisms responsible for their behaviour and fruitful ways to probe and discover new materials in the vast compositional space that remains to be explored.

High-entropy alloys

Review on recent progress of nanostructured anode materials for Li-ion batteries

Positive electrodes for Li-ion and lithium batteries (also termed “cathodes”) have been under intense scrutiny since the advent of the Li-ion cell in 1991. This is especially true in the past decade. Early on, carbonaceous materials dominated the negative electrode and hence most of the possible improvements in the cell were anticipated at the positive terminal; on the other hand, major developments in negative electrode materials made in the last portion of the decade with the introduction of nanocomposite Sn/C/Co alloys and Si−C composites have demanded higher capacity positive electrodes to match. Much of this was driven by the consumer market for small portable electronic devices. More recently, there has been a growing interest in developing Li−sulfur and Li−air batteries that have the potential for vastly increased capacity and energy density, which is needed to power large-scale systems. These require even more complex assemblies at the positive electrode in order to achieve good properties. This r...

Positive Electrode Materials for Li-Ion and Li-Batteries†

Raman spectra of birnessite manganese dioxides

Impedance spectroscopy measurements evidence superionic Li+ mobility (>10−3 S cm−1) at room temperature and fast ionic mobility for Na+ (5 × 10−6 S cm−1) in high entropy oxides, a new family of oxide-based materials with the general formula (MgCoNiCuZn)1−x−yGayAxO (with A = Li, Na, K). Structural investigations indicate that the conduction path probably involves oxygen vacancies.

/pdf/room-temperature-lithium-superionic-conductivity-in-high-azwwtkvq16.pdf

Room temperature lithium superionic conductivity in high entropy oxides

Entropic contributions to the stability of solids are very well understood and the mixing entropy has been used for forming various solids, for instance such as inverse spinels, see Nawrotsky et al., J. Inorg. Nucl. Chem. 29, 2701 (1967) [1]. A particular development was related to high entropy alloys by Yeh et al., Adv. Eng. Mater. 6, 299 (2004) [2] and Cantor et al., Mater. Sci. Eng. A 375–377, 213 (2004) [3] (for recent reviews see Zhang et al., Prog. Mater. Sci. 61, 1 (2014) [4] and Tsai et al., Mater. Res. Lett. 2, 107 (2014) [5]) in which the configurational disorder is responsible for forming simple solid solutions and which are thoroughly studied for various applications especially due to their mechanical properties, e.g. Gludovatz et al., Science 345, 1153 (2014) [6] and Lu et al., Sci. Rep. 4, 6200 (2014) [7], but also electrical properties, Kozelj et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 113, 107001 (2014) [8], hydrogen storage, Kao et al., Int. J. Hydrogen Energy 35, 9046 (2010) [9], magnetic properties, Zhang et al., Sci. Rep. 3, 1455 (2013) [10]. Many unexplored compositions and properties still remain for this class of materials due to their large phase space. In a recent report it has been shown that the configurational disorder can be used for stabilizing simple solid solutions of oxides, which should normally not form solid solutions, see Rost et al., Nature Commun. 6, 8485 (2015) [11] these new materials were called ”entropy-stabilized oxides”. In this pioneering report, it was shown that mixing five equimolar binary oxides yielded, after heating at high temperature and quenching, an unexpected rock salt structure compound with statistical distribution of the cations in a face centered cubic lattice. Following this seminal study, we show here that these high entropy oxides (named HEOx hereafter) can be substituted by aliovalent elements with a charge compensation mechanism. This possibility largely increases the potential development of new materials by widening their (already complex) phase space. As a first example, we report here that at least one HEOx composition exhibits colossal dielectric constants, which could make it very promising for applications as large-k dielectric materials. (© 2016 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH &Co. KGaA, Weinheim)

Colossal dielectric constant in high entropy oxides

Comparison between different LiFePO4 synthesis routes and their influence on its physico-chemical properties

LiFePO4 powders were synthesized under two different conditions ~hydrothermal or mechanochemical activation! using iron~II! phosphate and lithium phosphate as starting materials. The samples were characterized by X-ray diffraction, chemical titration, and their electrochemical performance was investigated in terms of cycling behavior and impedance response. We also report the benefit of introducing an electronic conductor precursor ~typically a sucrose! during or after the synthesis to overcome the poor charge transfer associated to the lithium iron phosphate.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1149/1.1506962/pdf

Sylvain Franger

Papers

Raman spectra of birnessite manganese dioxides

Room temperature lithium superionic conductivity in high entropy oxides

Colossal dielectric constant in high entropy oxides

Comparison between different LiFePO4 synthesis routes and their influence on its physico-chemical properties

LiFePO4 Synthesis Routes for Enhanced Electrochemical Performance