Major progress toward developing a next-generation, all solid-state lithium battery has been achieved using a garnet-based ceramic electrolyte.
Venkataraman Thangadurai, a professor in the Chemistry Department at University of Calgary, worked with colleagues at the University of Maryland, College Park in the United States in developing the new battery.
“The technology we have developed would enable absolutely stable, robust, safe, high-powered, all solid-state lithium batteries for future energy storage,” said Professor Thangadurai
The batteries have the potential to be used in everything from consumer devices to electric cars and right through to energy storage units for storing electricity generated by wind and solar power.
Existing lithium batteries use membranes comprised of organic polymer compounds and lithium salts as the electrolyte. Instead of using flammable organic polymers, a solid ceramic electrolyte has been used for the new battery, which is said to be chemically stable, non-flammable, and can function at higher voltage than existing batteries.
A key component of the new technology are garnets, silicate minerals that are most commonly used as gemstones and abrasives.
While garnet-type solid-state electrolytes have attracted a good deal of attention due to their attributes, up until now little success has been achieved in the development of high-performance solid-state batteries using these materials.
One of the challenges has been overcoming interfacial impedance between the garnet electrolyte and electrode materials. However, a process of atomic layer deposition to create a thin layer of aluminum oxide on top of a garnet structure coating the ceramic electrolyte appears to have overcome this hurdle.
It will be still quite a while before the battery is ready for prime-time. The next step is to scale up the size of the battery (the prototype is a button-type device) and monitor long-term stability. Professor Thangadurai believes it may take around five years to develop a commercial-scale solid-state lithium battery.
The work of the professor and his colleagues to date has been published in the journal Nature Materials.
Another group working on solid state lithium batteries is an alliance between MIT and the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology.
