Nano-Micro Letters, Volume. 17, Issue 1, 018(2025)

Molecule-Level Multiscale Design of Nonflammable Gel Polymer Electrolyte to Build Stable SEI/CEI for Lithium Metal Battery

Qiqi Sun1... Zelong Gong1, Tao Zhang1, Jiafeng Li1, Xianli Zhu1, Ruixiao Zhu1, Lingxu Wang1, Leyuan Ma1, Xuehui Li1, Miaofa Yuan1, Zhiwei Zhang1, Luyuan Zhang1, Zhao Qian1,*, Longwei Yin1,**, Rajeev Ahuja2 and Chengxiang Wang1,*** |Show fewer author(s)
Author Affiliations
  • 1Key Laboratory for Liquid-Solid Structural Evolution and Processing of Materials (Ministry of Education), School of Materials Science and Engineering, Shandong University, Jinan 250061, People’s Republic of China
  • 2Condensed Matter Theory, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Uppsala University, Uppsala 75120, Sweden
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    The risk of flammability is an unavoidable issue for gel polymer electrolytes (GPEs). Usually, flame-retardant solvents are necessary to be used, but most of them would react with anode/cathode easily and cause serious interfacial instability, which is a big challenge for design and application of nonflammable GPEs. Here, a nonflammable GPE (SGPE) is developed by in situ polymerizing trifluoroethyl methacrylate (TFMA) monomers with flame-retardant triethyl phosphate (TEP) solvents and LiTFSI–LiDFOB dual lithium salts. TEP is strongly anchored to PTFMA matrix via polarity interaction between -P = O and -CH2CF3. It reduces free TEP molecules, which obviously mitigates interfacial reactions, and enhances flame-retardant performance of TEP surprisingly. Anchored TEP molecules are also inhibited in solvation of Li+, leading to anion-dominated solvation sheath, which creates inorganic-rich solid electrolyte interface/cathode electrolyte interface layers. Such coordination structure changes Li+ transport from sluggish vehicular to fast structural transport, raising ionic conductivity to 1.03 mS cm-1 and transfer number to 0.41 at 30 °C. The Li|SGPE|Li cell presents highly reversible Li stripping/plating performance for over 1000 h at 0.1 mA cm-2, and 4.2 V LiCoO2|SGPE|Li battery delivers high average specific capacity > 120 mAh g-1 over 200 cycles. This study paves a new way to make nonflammable GPE that is compatible with Li metal anode.

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    Qiqi Sun, Zelong Gong, Tao Zhang, Jiafeng Li, Xianli Zhu, Ruixiao Zhu, Lingxu Wang, Leyuan Ma, Xuehui Li, Miaofa Yuan, Zhiwei Zhang, Luyuan Zhang, Zhao Qian, Longwei Yin, Rajeev Ahuja, Chengxiang Wang. Molecule-Level Multiscale Design of Nonflammable Gel Polymer Electrolyte to Build Stable SEI/CEI for Lithium Metal Battery[J]. Nano-Micro Letters, 2025, 17(1): 018

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    Paper Information

    Category: Research Articles

    Received: May. 24, 2024

    Accepted: Aug. 10, 2024

    Published Online: Feb. 12, 2025

    The Author Email: Qian Zhao (qianzhao@sdu.edu.cn), Yin Longwei (yinlw@sdu.edu.cn), Wang Chengxiang (wcxmat@sdu.edu.cn)

    DOI:10.1007/s40820-024-01508-z

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