Abstract
The dominant chemistries of lithium-ion batteries on the market today still rely on flammable organic liquid electrolytes and cathodes containing scarce metals, such as cobalt or nickel, raising safety, cost and environmental concerns. Here we show a FeCl3 cathode that costs as little as 1% of the cost of a LiCoO2 cathode or 2% of a LiFePO4 cathode. Once coupled with a solid halide electrolyte and a lithium-indium (Li–In) alloy anode, it enables all-solid-state lithium-ion batteries without any liquid components. Notably, FeCl3 exhibits two flat voltage plateaux between 3.5 and 3.8 V versus Li+/Li, and the solid cell retains 83% of its initial capacity after 1,000 cycles with an average Coulombic efficiency of 99.95%. Combined neutron diffraction and X-ray absorption spectroscopy characterizations reveal a Li-ion (de)intercalation mechanism together with a Fe2+/Fe3+ redox process. Our work provides a promising avenue for developing sustainable battery technologies with a favourable balance of performance, cost and safety.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Journal | Nature Sustainability |
| DOIs | |
| State | Accepted/In press - 2024 |
Funding
Z.L. and H.C. acknowledge financial support from the National Science Foundation (Grant Nos. 1706723 and 2108688) and from the faculty startup fund of Georgia Tech. The Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory was made available through the General User Program, which is supported by the US Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences (Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357). This research also used the 28ID-2 XPD beamline of the National Synchrotron Light Source II, a DOE, Office of Science user facility operated for the DOE Office of Science by Brookhaven National Laboratory (Contract No. DE-SC0012704). A portion of this research used resources at the Spallation Neutron Source, a DOE Office of Science user facility operated by Oak Ridge National Laboratory. J.L. thanks the DOE, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences for funding support (Grant No. DOE-BES-ERKCSNX). S.Z. and Y.T. acknowledge support from the National Science Foundation (Grant No. 1923802) and NASA (Grant No. 80NSSC21K0483). We thank the beamline scientists J. Okasinski, J. Bai and W. Xu for their help with the synchrotron experiments. We thank Z. Fan\u2019s group at the University of Houston for assisting with scanning electron microscopy characterizations.