Commercialization of Lithium Battery Technologies for Electric Vehicles

Over the past decades, Li-ion battery (LIB) has turned into one of the most important advances in the history of technology due to its extensive and in-depth impact on our life. Its omnipresence in all electric vehicles, consumer electronics and electric grids relies on the precisely tuned electrochemical dynamics and interactions among the electrolytes and the diversified anode and cathode chemistries therein. With consumers' demand for battery performance ever increasing, more and more stringent requirements are being imposed upon the established equilibria among these LIB components, and it became clear that the state-of-the-art electrolyte systems could no longer sustain the desired technological trajectory. Driven by such gap, researchers started to explore more unconventional electrolyte systems. From superconcentrated solvent-in-salt electrolytes to solid-state electrolytes, the current research realm of novel electrolyte systems has grown to unprecedented levels. In this review, we will avoid discussions on current state-of-the-art electrolytes but instead focus exclusively on unconventional electrolyte systems that represent new concepts.

New Concepts in Electrolytes.

Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), with relatively high energy density and power density, have been considered as a vital energy source in our daily life, especially in electric vehicles. However, energy density and safety related to thermal runaways are the main concerns for their further applications. In order to deeply understand the development of high energy density and safe LIBs, we comprehensively review the safety features of LIBs and the failure mechanisms of cathodes, anodes, separators and electrolyte. The corresponding solutions for designing safer components are systematically proposed. Additionally, the in situ or operando techniques, such as microscopy and spectrum analysis, the fiber Bragg grating sensor and the gas sensor, are summarized to monitor the internal conditions of LIBs in real time. The main purpose of this review is to provide some general guidelines for the design of safe and high energy density batteries from the views of both material and cell levels. Safety of lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) with high energy density becomes more and more important in the future for EVs development. The safety issues of the LIBs are complicated, related to both materials and the cell level. To ensure the safety of LIBs, in-depth understanding of the safety features, precise design of the battery materials and real-time monitoring/detection of the cells should be systematically considered. Here, we specifically summarize the safety features of the LIBs from the aspects of their voltage and temperature tolerance, the failure mechanism of the LIB materials and corresponding improved methods. We further review the in situ or operando techniques to real-time monitor the internal conditions of LIBs.

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Building Safe Lithium-Ion Batteries for Electric Vehicles: A Review

To meet the practical demand of overall water splitting and regenerative metal-air batteries, highly efficient, low-cost, and durable electrocatalysts for the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR), oxygen evolution reaction (OER), and hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) are required to displace noble metal catalysts. In this work, a facile solid-state synthesis strategy is developed to construct the interfacial engineering of W2 N/WC heterostructures, in which abundant interfaces are formed. Under high temperature (800 °C), volatile CNx species from dicyanodiamide are trapped by WO3 nanorods, followed by simultaneous nitridation and carbonization, to form W2 N/WC heterostructure catalysts. The resultant W2 N/WC heterostructure catalysts exhibit an efficient and stable electrocatalytic performance toward the ORR, OER, and HER, including a half-wave potential of 0.81 V (ORR) and a low overpotential at 10 mA cm-2 for the OER (320 mV) and HER (148.5 mV). Furthermore, a W2 N/WC-based Zn-air battery shows outstanding high power density (172 mW cm-2 ). Density functional theory and X-ray absorption fine structure analysis computations reveal that W2 N/WC interfaces synergistically facilitate transport and separation of charge, thus accelerating the electrochemical ORR, OER, and HER. This work paves a novel avenue for constructing efficient and low-cost electrocatalysts for electrochemical energy devices.

Interfacial Engineering of W 2 N/WC Heterostructures Derived from Solid-State Synthesis: A Highly Efficient Trifunctional Electrocatalyst for ORR, OER, and HER.

Over the past decade, the surging interest for higher-energy-density, cheaper, and safer battery technology has spurred tremendous research efforts in the development of improved rechargeable zinc-air batteries. Current zinc-air batteries suffer from poor energy efficiency and cycle life, owing mainly to the poor rechargeability of zinc and air electrodes. To achieve high utilization and cyclability in the zinc anode, construction of conductive porous framework through elegant optimization strategies and adaptation of alternate active material are employed. Equally, there is a need to design new and improved bifunctional oxygen catalysts with high activity and stability to increase battery energy efficiency and lifetime. Efforts to engineer catalyst materials to increase the reactivity and/or number of bifunctional active sites are effective for improving air electrode performance. Here, recent key advances in material development for rechargeable zinc-air batteries are described. By improving fundamental understanding of materials properties relevant to the rechargeable zinc and air electrodes, zinc-air batteries will be able to make a significant impact on the future energy storage for electric vehicle application. To conclude, a brief discussion on noteworthy concepts of advanced electrode and electrolyte systems that are beyond the current state-of-the-art zinc-air battery chemistry, is presented.

Recent Progress in Electrically Rechargeable Zinc–Air Batteries

Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) are currently the most suitable energy storage device for powering electric vehicles (EVs) owing to their attractive properties including high energy efficiency, lack of memory effect, long cycle life, high energy density and high power density. These advantages allow them to be smaller and lighter than other conventional rechargeable batteries such as lead–acid batteries, nickel–cadmium batteries (Ni–Cd) and nickel–metal hydride batteries (Ni–MH). Modern EVs, however, still suffer from performance barriers (range, charging rate, lifetime, etc.) and technological barriers (high cost, safety, reliability, etc.), limiting their widespread adoption. Given these facts, this review sets the extensive market penetration of LIB-powered EVs as an ultimate objective and then discusses recent advances and challenges of electric automobiles, mainly focusing on critical element resources, present and future EV markets, and the cost and performance of LIBs.
 Finally, novel battery chemistries and technologies including high-energy electrode materials and all-solid-state batteries are also evaluated for their potential capabilities in next-generation long-range EVs.

Automotive Li-Ion Batteries: Current Status and Future Perspectives

Ni-Rich/Co-Poor Layered Cathode for Automotive Li-Ion Batteries: Promises and Challenges

Rechargeable zinc–air batteries (ZnABs) are attracting great interest due to their high theoretical specific energy, safety, and economic viability. However, their performance and large-scale practical applications are largely limited by poor durability and high overpotential on the air-cathode due to the slow kinetics of the oxygen reduction and evolution reactions (ORR/OER). Therefore, it is highly desired to exploit an ideal bifunctional catalyst to endow the obtained ZnABs with excellent ORR/OER catalytic performances. Herein, a new nonprecious-metal bifunctional catalyst of urchin-like NiCo2S4 microsphere synergized with sulfur-doped graphene nanosheets (S-GNS/NiCo2S4) is controllably designed and synthesized by simply tailoring the structure and electronic arrangement, which endow the as-prepared catalyst with excellent electroactivity and long-term durability toward ORR and OER. Importantly, ZnABs constructed by this outstanding catalyst exhibit high power density, small charge/discharge voltage gap, and excellent cycle stability, notably outperforming the more costly commercial Pt/C + Ir/C mixture catalyst. These excellent electrocatalytic performances together with the simplicity of the synthetic method, make the urchin-like NiCo2S4 microsphere/S-GNS hybrid nanostructure exhibit great promise as a superior air-cathode catalyst for high-performance rechargeable ZnABs.

Controllable Urchin-Like NiCo2S4 Microsphere Synergized with Sulfur-Doped Graphene as Bifunctional Catalyst for Superior Rechargeable Zn–Air Battery

3D N-doped hybrid architectures assembled from 0D T-Nb2O5 embedded in carbon microtubes toward high-rate Li-ion capacitors

In this work, nickel–cobalt mixed metal phosphides encapsulated into nitrogen-doped carbon nanocones (Ni2P/NiCoP@NCCs) have been prepared through a facile ammonia-etching of nickel–cobalt Prussian blue analogs (Ni–Co PBAs) followed by a subsequent phosphidation treatment. During the in situ and confined phosphidation process, very small nickel–cobalt mixed metal phosphide nanocrystallites are uniformly incorporated into the simultaneously produced nitrogen-doped carbon matrix. Due to the unique structure and composition, the resultant Ni2P/NiCoP@NCCs possess high electrocatalytic activity and excellent durability for the HER in both acidic and alkaline solutions.

Yuanli Ding

Papers

Automotive Li-Ion Batteries: Current Status and Future Perspectives

Ni-Rich/Co-Poor Layered Cathode for Automotive Li-Ion Batteries: Promises and Challenges

Controllable Urchin-Like NiCo2S4 Microsphere Synergized with Sulfur-Doped Graphene as Bifunctional Catalyst for Superior Rechargeable Zn–Air Battery

3D N-doped hybrid architectures assembled from 0D T-Nb2O5 embedded in carbon microtubes toward high-rate Li-ion capacitors

Nitrogen-doped carbon nanocones encapsulating with nickel–cobalt mixed phosphides for enhanced hydrogen evolution reaction