Aliphatic Polycarbonate-Based Solid-State Polymer Electrolytes for Advanced Lithium Batteries: Advances and Perspective

Small. 2018 Sep;14(36):e1800821. doi: 10.1002/smll.201800821. Epub 2018 Aug 2.

Abstract

Conventional liquid electrolytes based lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) might suffer from serious safety hazards. Solid-state polymer electrolytes (SPEs) are very promising candidate with high security for advanced LIBs. However, the quintessential frailties of pristine polyethylene oxide/lithium salts SPEs are poor ionic conductivity (≈10-8 S cm-1 ) at 25 °C and narrow electrochemical window (<4 V). Many innovative researches are carried out to enhance their lithium-ion conductivity (10-4 S cm-1 at 25 °C), which is still far from meeting the needs of high-performance power LIBs at ambient temperature. Therefore, it is a pressing urgency of exploring novel polymer host materials for advanced SPEs aimed to develop high-performance solid lithium batteries. Aliphatic polycarbonate, an emerging and promising solid polymer electrolyte, has attracted much attention of academia and industry. The amorphous structure, flexible chain segments, and high dielectric constant endow this class of polymer electrolyte excellent comprehensive performance especially in ionic conductivity, electrochemical stability, and thermally dimensional stability. To date, many types of aliphatic polycarbonate solid polymer electrolyte are discovered. Herein, the latest developments on aliphatic polycarbonate SPEs for solid-state lithium batteries are summarized. Finally, main challenges and perspective of aliphatic polycarbonate solid polymer electrolytes are illustrated at the end of this review.

Keywords: advanced lithium batteries; advances and perspectives; aliphatic polycarbonate; solid-state polymer electrolytes.

Publication types

  • Review