Flexible High Lithium-Ion Conducting PEO-Based Solid Polymer Electrolyte with Liquid Plasticizers for High Performance Solid-State Lithium Batteries

Abstract

Lithium-ion secondary batteries (LIB) with high energy density have attracted much attention for electric vehicle (EV) applications. However, LIBs have a safety problem because these batteries contain a flammable organic electrolyte. As such, all-solid secondary batteries that are not flammable have been extensively reported recently. In this study, we have focused on polymer electrolytes, which is flexible and is expected to address the safety problem. However, the conventional polymer electrolytes have low electrial conductivity at room temperature. Various attempts have been made to solve this problem, such as the addition of inorganic fillers and ionic liquids; however, these composite polymer electrolytes have not yet reached a practical level of lithium-ion conductivity. In this study, high electrical conductivity and lithium dendrite formation-free PEO based composite electrolytes are developed with both a filler of Li_6,4La₃Zr_1.4Ta_0.6O₁₂ and liquid plasticizers of tetraethylene glycol dimethyl ether and 1,2 dimethoxyethane. The proposed flexible polymer electrolyte shows a high electrical conduciviy of 6.01×10^-4 S cm^-1 at 25 °C.

Keywords: composite; liquid plasticizer; lithium anode; polymer electrolyte; solid lithium-ion conductor.