Global energy demand grows very fast, while fossil fuel reserves decrease. For this reason, enormous efforts are focused on the production of new renewable, clean, safe and reliable forms of energy to ensure a sustainable future. At the same time, it is necessary to include energy vectors that allow storing and transporting said energy to be used when and where it is required. Lithium-based batteries are currently presented as one of the best systems to meet this need. Although its use in portable electronic devices is already established, the implementation in stationary energy accumulation and in the electric vehicle sector demands a notable increase in its energy density. That is why these new demands make a primary aspect, and which is currently a topic of study worldwide, to the development of materials with which the components for rechargeable lithium batteries are produced.
In the case of lithium-sulfur batteries, metallic lithium is used as the active material for the anode and sulfur for the cathode. After several electrochemical charge and discharge cycles, small branches form on the surface of the lithium metal electrode, called dendrites. These ramifications can cause a short circuit leading to spontaneous discharges, causing rapid heating and even fire, making them unsafe. Therefore, new investigations have found promising alternatives to avoid these drawbacks, based on the deposition of protective polymers on the surface of the metallic Li anode and the study of its effect on the degradation of the material properties. The polymers to be used are polymeric ionic liquids. Ionic liquids are molten salts whose melting temperature is less than 100°C. Considering the non-flammability and non-volatility properties of ionic liquids, they make reasonable alternatives as part of electrolytes because they offer important improvements, for example, in terms of safety. For this reason, the imim-DEHP protic ionic liquid synthesized for the first time by me and reported in the paper RSC Advances, 2017, 7, 44743 will be used, since we have observed that, with small amounts of water, imim-DEHP has the ability to form a gel, so it will be used in lithium batteries to coat the lithium anodes. Thus showing the versatility of this amphiphilic ionic liquid, since it forms organized systems in water and in non-polar organic solvents, as well as gels with a small amount of water.
Find out more:
Improvement of the amphiphilic properties of a dialkyl phosphate by creation of a protic ionic liquid-like surfactant
Cristian M. O. Lépori, Juana J. Silber, R. Darío Falcone and N. Mariano Correa
RSC Adv., 2017, 7, 44743
About the Web Writer:
Cristian M. O. Lépori is Doctor in Chemical Sciences and currently has a postdoctoral position at the “Enrique Gaviola” Institute of Physics, CONICET, National University of Córdoba (Argentina). He works in the area of nuclear magnetic resonance studying hybrid materials formed with porous matrices and ionic liquids for use in lithium batteries. He likes to plan, organize and carry out science dissemination activities. You can find him on Twitter at @cristianlepo.
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