Cathode Design for All-Solid-State Lithium Battereis

Next-generation EVs require high energy batteries (&gt;450 Wh/kg, &gt;1,000 Wh/L) which can be charged to 80% capacity in 15 minutes or less with stable performance over 500+ cycles. Li-metal based solid-state batteries can acheive this target with added advantage of safety and potentailly cost compared to current state-of-the-art Li-ion batteries. Acheiving such targets require substantial innovation in materials and interfacial design that can lead to (1) solid-state cathodes with high areal capacity (5 mAh/cm²) that can sustain high current densities (15-20 mA/cm²). In addtion, such cathodes must be extremely energy dense, have high ionic/electronic conductivities, and form stable, low resistance interfaces with solid-elelctrolyte (SE), (2) Li metal anodes and stable Li/SE interfaces that prevent Li dendrite formation at high current densities (&gt;15 mA/cm²) and (3 ) scalable fabrication approaches to integrate the cathode and Li anode with thin SE separators. While such performance metrics can be achieved independently at the component level, but the key technical barrier is to get them working at the device (cell) level.<br/>The talk will highlight several cathode design strategies using conventional lithium-ion cathodes such as NMC as well other high capacity cobalt free compostions. Interfacial design to reduce area specifc resistance (ASR) between cathode-SE interfaces and startegies for enhancing ionic and electronic networking for cathode composites will be discussed.<br/>Research work conducted at Oak Ridge National Laboratory is supported by Asst. Secretary, Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Vehicle Technologies Office (VTO) through the Advanced Battery Materials Research (BMR) Program.