Scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have developed a conductive polymer coating – called HOS-PFM – that could enable longer lasting, more powerful lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles. The HOS-PFM coating conducts both electrons and ions at the same time. This ensures battery stability and high charge/discharge rates while enhancing battery life. The coating also shows promise as a battery adhesive that could extend the lifetime of a lithium-ion battery from an average of 10 years to about 15 years.
During experiments at the Advanced Light Source and the Molecular Foundry, the researchers demonstrated that the HOS-PFM coating significantly prevents silicon- and aluminum-based electrodes from degrading during battery cycling while delivering high battery capacity over 300 cycles, a performance rate that’s on par with today’s state-of-the-art electrodes. The results are impressive, because silicon-based lithium-ion cells typically last for a limited number of charge/discharge cycles and calendar life. “The advance opens up a new approach to developing EV batteries that are more affordable and easy to manufacture.” said Gao Liu, Berkeley Lab senior scientist.
