Stefano Passerini
Institute of Physical Chemistry and MEET
University of Muenster, Germany
The rise of global environmental concerns is pushing science and industry toward the development and realization of improved electrochemical storage systems for a more efficient and effective use of energy. This is especially true in the mobility field where the present use of energy is, in fact, based on the immediate but rather inefficient and polluting conversion of fossil fuels because of the lack of effective energy storage systems.
Present high-energy battery technologies, namely Li-ion batteries, do not allow the realization of electric vehicles capable of a 500 km driving range with one battery charge. In fact, even considering the most optimistic estimation on the development of Li-Ion batteries (250 Wh/kg), which would correspond to more than 33% of the theoretical specific energy calculated on the active material weight only, it is clear that the 500 km range cannot be achieved with Li-ion (the battery weight would be more than 400 kg).
Much higher specific capacities can be achieved using lithium metal/element chemistries (Li/S, Li/O2 etc.). However, the long-term cycling stability of lithium metal anodes has been, so far, preventing the development of lithium metal-based battery chemistries.
In this work the improvements obtained by using battery electrolytes containing ionic liquids (ILs) will be presented
