K. Amine, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, IL
To enable mass electrification of vehicles, there is an urgent need of developing high-energy density battery that offer 15 years calendar life and meet all the abuse tolerance needed to demonstrate excellent safety performance. These challenging requirements make it difficult for conventional battery systems to be adopted in EVs or smart grid application. In this talk, we will present different advanced coating technologies that can stabilize the interface between electrodes and electrolyte leading to significant improvement of both cycle and calendar life as well as battery safety. The protective coating can be done either at the electrode level or at the particle level. We will disclose both inactive coating by spraying nano particle of stable metal oxide, fluoride or phosphate on the secondary particle of the active cathode particles or polymerising a PEDOT conductive polymer to fully protect the secondary and primary particle of the cathode. We will also disclose an active coating using a dual mode gradient approach where we put a stable structure at the surface of the cathode particle to eliminate any Oxygen release responsible for surface parasitic reaction and oxidation of electrolyte causing a thermal runaway. Another alternative is to use functional electrolyte additives to form a robust coating film on the electrode by either reduction, oxidation or polymerization of the additive to form a passivation film that can prevent any side reaction between electrodes and electrolyte at both high voltage and high temperature. These coating technologies have proven to be very effective low-cost approach to enhance battery safety and performance and can enable low-cost long range electric vehicles and smart grid.