Electronic properties of lithium-ion battery cathodes studied in ion-gated transistor configuration

Federico Poli; José Ramón Herrera; Tian Lan; Prajwal Kumar; Clara Santato; Francesca Soavi

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2022.105888

Electronic properties of lithium-ion battery cathodes studied in ion-gated transistor configuration

iScience. 2022 Dec 27;26(1):105888. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2022.105888. eCollection 2023 Jan 20.

Authors

Federico Poli¹, José Ramón Herrera², Tian Lan², Prajwal Kumar², Clara Santato², Francesca Soavi¹

Affiliations

¹ Dipartimento di Chimica "Giacomo Ciamician", Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna, 40132, Bologna, Italy.
² Engineering Physics, Polytechnique Montreal, 2500 Chemin de Polytechnique, Montreal, H3T 1J4, Canada.

Abstract

Electronic and ionic transport governs lithium-ion battery (LIB) operation. The in operando study of electronic transport in lithium-ion transition metal oxide (LMOx) cathodes at different states of charge enables the evaluation of the state of health of LIBs and the optimization of their performance. We report on electronic transport in LIB cathode materials at different states of charge controlled in operando in ion-gated transistor (IGT) configuration. We considered LiNi_0.5Mn_0.3Co_0.2O₂ (NMC532)- and LiMn_1.5Ni_0.5O₄ (LNMO)-based composite materials formulated like in conventional LIB cathodes and operated in the organic electrolyte LP30 (1M LiPF₆ in ethylene carbonate:dimethyl carbonate 1:1 v/v). NMC532- and LNMO-based cathode materials were used as the transistor channel materials and LP30 as the ion gating medium. Beyond its impact on the field of LIBs, our work advances the design of novel devices based on mixed ionic and electronic transport, including neuromorphic computing.

Keywords: Applied sciences; Electrochemistry; Energy storage.