Science Daily August 22, 2018
In a lithium-ion battery, a thin piece of plastic separates the two electrodes. If the battery is damaged and the plastic layer fails, the electrodes can come into contact and cause the battery’s liquid electrolyte to catch fire. Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory used perfectly spherical, 200-nanometer-diameter particles of silica suspended in common liquid electrolytes for lithium-ion batteries. On impact, the silica clump together and block the flow of fluids and ions. Uniformly sized particles disperse homogeneously. If they are not homogenously sized, the liquid becomes less viscous on impact. If the electrodes don’t touch each other, the battery doesn’t catch fire. Incorporating the additive would require only minor adjustments to the conventional battery manufacturing process. They presented their paper at a recent ACS meeting… read more.
The physical mechanisms by which the heat is distributed can be analysed by temporally resolved X-ray diffraction experiments. Credit: HZB/University Potsdam