Direct Recycling of End-of-Life Battery Electrodes by Controlling the Solvation Power of Solvent

Recycling end-of-life lithium-ion batteries is essential to address environmental concerns and promote global sustainability. Current disposal technologies primarily rely on thermal and wet-chemical extraction of valuable metals, which, despite their reliability, pose significant challenges due to high energy consumption and secondary pollution. Herein, we introduce a novel approach to direct battery recycling that eliminates the need for dismantling and raw material extraction from spent batteries by controlling the solvation power of solvents during the recycling process. Optimizing the solvent's solvating power for capacity-degraded electrodes with inactive interfaces and lithium-ion loss can rejuvenate the electrode, resulting in capacity recovery. Characterization of SEM and XRD exhibits the effect of solvent-based direct recycling. Compared to traditional pyrometallurgical and hydrometallurgical recycling technologies, our method enables battery electrode regeneration at ambient temperature and pressure without disassembly, facilitating a more efficient and scalable closed-loop LIB recycling process.