Battery Safety

Improving Electrolyte Safety with Solvent Design Converse to traditional electrolyte design heuristics, weakly solvating electrolytes were shown to dramatically decrease flammability and thermal runaway in Li-ion cells Creating an electrolyte with weak Li ion solvation at low-temperature and strong, irreversible Li solvation at high temperature isolate reactive species during thermal runaway. After examining 20 solvent-ion pairs, a two-solvent system of 1-methoxybutane MOB) and diglyme G2) with 1M LiFSI showed improved capacity retention during cycling and dramatic reduction in temperature evolution during nail penetration tests.

Solvent systems with weaker, temperature dependent Li ion solvation can be used to make inherently safer, commercially relevant Li-ion batteries.

Source: Sun et al, Nat Energy 2025

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