Recently, Huang Jiaqi’s research group from the Advanced Research Institute of Multidisciplinary Science of Beijing Institute of Technology published a review article titled "Toward the Scale-Up of Solid-State Lithium" in the top international journal "Advanced Energy Materials" ("Advanced Energy Materials", impact factor 25.245). Metal Batteries: The Gaps between Lab-Level Cells and Practical Large-Format Batteries", focusing on the practical bottleneck of solid electrolyte lithium metal batteries. The corresponding author of this article is Professor Huang Jiaqi from the Advanced Research Institute of Multidisciplinary Science, Beijing Institute of Technology, and the first author is Xu Lei, a doctoral student at the School of Materials Science/Advanced Research Institute of Multidisciplinary Science, Beijing Institute of Technology.

Because of its advantages of high stability, low flammability, no leakage and explosion hazard, solid electrolyte is the best choice to replace traditional flammable electrolyte to achieve high safety lithium battery. At the same time, a solid electrolyte with a wide electrochemical window and high mechanical strength can give full play to the advantages of lithium metal negative electrodes and high-voltage positive electrodes, and realize the construction of high-safety and high-energy density lithium metal batteries. However, the current laboratory-level research results cannot fully support the application of solid-state batteries, and there is still a certain gap compared with practical system batteries.

Figure 1. The development history of solid electrolyte and solid battery

This article briefly reviews the development history of solid electrolytes (as shown in Figure 1), and summarizes the solid electrolytes and their applications in lithium metal batteries in recent years, and it emphasizes the great potential of solid electrolyte lithium metal batteries to achieve high energy density and high safety. The article pointed out that the current laboratory-level research is usually evaluated under relatively mild conditions, and some advanced guiding strategies are difficult to show its effect in practical system batteries. Compared with the practical soft-pack battery, the laboratory model system level battery has great system differences in the structure, material preparation, battery assembly and evaluation process. Therefore, an in-depth understanding of the scientific issues in the amplification process of solid-state batteries, and the combination of laboratory-level strategies and large-scale production technologies are the keys to the practical realization of solid-state electrolyte lithium metal batteries.

From the four aspects of solid electrolyte, positive electrode, negative electrode and battery configuration, the article discusses in detail the challenges and future opportunities in the amplification process, and summarizes the common problems and main differences in the process of battery amplification (Figure 2). This article focuses on the specific requirements of the structure, preparation and assembly of each component of the solid-state lithium metal battery under industrial production conditions. It emphasizes the development directions with great potential, such as dry electrode preparation method, battery assembly method for positive electrode support, and double electrode technical solution based on laminated technology. The paper also points out that the preparation process of soft-pack batteries is compatible with solid electrolytes, which may be beneficial to take advantage of the high energy density of solid-state batteries. This review is expected to provide a reference for future research of solid electrolyte and development of battery manufacturing technology.

Attachment of introduction to the author:

Huang Jiaqi is a professor of Advanced Research Institute of Multidisciplinary Science, doctoral supervisor, and member of Jiu San Society of Beijing Institute of Technology. He mainly carries out research on energy chemistry of high specific energy batteries. He has published more than 100 research works in Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., J. Am. Chem. Soc., Adv. Mater., Adv. Funct. Mater., Sci. Bull. and other journals, with an h factor of 77, more than 50 of which are highly cited ESI papers. He was selected for the first China Association for Science and Technology Young Talents Support Program, and was awarded the Hou Debang Chemical Technology Youth Award of the Chinese Society of Chemical Industry, the Young Particle Science Award of the Chinese Society of Particuology, and Highly Cited Scientists from 2018 to 2020 by Clarivate Analytics.

Details of the article: Lei Xu, Yang Lu, Chen-Zi Zhao, Hong Yuan, Gao-Long Zhu, Li-Peng Hou, Qiang Zhang, Jia-Qi Huang*. Toward the Scale-Up of Solid-State Lithium Metal Batteries: The Gaps between Lab-Level Cells and Practical Large-Format Batteries, Advanced Energy Materials, 2020, 2002360.

Link to the paper: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/aenm.202002360