Lithium - Ion Batteries: a microscopic view!

Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) play an important role in our daily life with a variety of applicants.

To this day, significant resources have been dedicated to the development of high-performance LIBs, particularly the research necessary to identify the optimum electrolyte materials to solve the safety issue. Up to this point polymer electrolytes are widely investigated for their potential to improve batteries’ safety.

Given the relative high ionic conductivity, λ, around 10-3 S/cm, poly-ethylene oxide (PEO) is frequently utilized as the polymer matrix in this scenario.

But compared to the commercial liquid electrolyte, the ionic conductivity of polymer electrolyte needs to be improved for at least ten times.

It is widely acknowledged that the transportation of Li+ is directly related to the segmental and backbone motions of the polymer indicating to improve the ionic conductivity by structure optimization of polymer.

Instead of using the traditional trial and error method, modern innovative studies intend to develop a microscopic picture of the Li–ion transportation process to instruct the polymer optimization but it is difficult with in-house laboratory methods. This project aims at designing a polymer with high ionic conductivity.

To achieve this goal, the microscopic view of Li+ transportation in polymer will be elucidated through molecular dynamics (MD) simulation and the polymer dynamics will be clarified with MD simulation and Quasi-elastic Neutron Scattering (QENS).