APPLICATIONS OF TECHNOLOGY:

  • Electric Vehicles
  • Li-ion Batteries

BENEFITS:

  • Cathode is made from inexpensive and earth abundant materials.
  • Improved cycling stability and higher energy density compared to conventional and currently available LIBs
  • More environmentally friendly and cost effective compared to current alternatives. 

BACKGROUND:

The development of lithium-ion battery (LIB) cathode technologies based on earth-abundant elements and the replacement of today’s Ni- and Co-based cathodes is one step towards sustainable energy technologies. Lithium- and manganese-rich (LMR) layered oxides are generally considered as the leading contender that have the highest technology readiness level (TRL). However, despite years of research and development there are a number of performance issues, particularly capacity decay, voltage fade and impedance rise with cycling, remain in the way of LMR commercialization. A method that shows promise to combat some of these issues is the fluorination of the cathodes. 

TECHNOLOGY OVERVIEW: 

Researchers at Berkeley lab have developed a molten-salt based in situ fluorination approach where fluoride salt mixtures with a low fluoroacidity were used as F– donors to improve fluorination efficacy. Unlike typical fluorination processes which use lithium fluoride (LiF) as the fluorine precursor which often leads to impurities in the final product, this process produces fluorinated LMR without apparent impurities based on a well-defined large single crystal Li1.2Ni0.2Mn0.6O2 (LNMO) as a platform.

At a high fluorination level, the fluorinated LNMO (FLNMO) cathode showed decreased oxygen activities, reduced side reactions at high voltages, and broadly improved cathode performance including higher initial coulombic efficiency, discharge energy and energy retention. 

DEVELOPMENT STAGE: 

Validation in Laboratory

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATORS:

Guoying Chen 

IP Status: Patent pending

Additional information:

ACS Energy Lett. 2024, 9, 3, 1249–1260. Publication Date:February 27, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1021/acsenergylett.3c02697

Related Technologies:

Novel Cost-effective Fluorination Method to Synthesize High-Energy Lithium-Ion Battery Cathode Materials 2020-096

OPPORTUNITIES: 

Available for licensing or collaborative research