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The evolution of Co coating in solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) under low and medium temperatures (

The safety monitoring of lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) is of great significance for realizing all-climate and full-lifespan battery management. In-situ measurement of anode potential with implanted reference electrodes (REs) has proven to be effective to monitor and avoid the occurrence of severe side reactions like Li plating to ensure the safe and fast charging. However, the intrinsic measurement errors caused by local blocking effects, which also can be referred to as potential artefacts, are seldom taken into consideration in existing studies, yet they highly dominate the correctness of conclusions inferred from REs. In this study, aiming at exploring the physical origin of the measurement errors and ensure reliable potential monitoring, electrochemical and post-mortem tests are conducted using commercial pouch cells with implanted REs. Corresponding electrochemical model which describes the blocking effects, is established to validate the abnormal absence of lithium plating that predicted by measured anode potentials under various charging rates. Theoretical derivation is further presented to explain the error sources, which can be attributed to increased local liquid potential of the RE position. Most importantly, with the guidance of error analysis, a novel parameter-independent error correction method for RE measurements is proposed for the first time, which is proven to be adequate to estimate the real anode potentials and deduce the critical C-rate of Li plating with extra safety margin. After error correction, the resulting critical C-rates are all within the range of 0.55 ± 0.03C, which is close to the C-rate of 0.6–0.7C obtained from experiments. In addition, this error correction method can be performed conveniently with only some simple RE measurements of polarization voltages, totally independent of battery electrochemical and geometric parameters. This study provides highly practical error correction method for RE measurements in real LIBs, substantially facilitating the fast diagnosis and safety evaluation of Li plating during charging of LIBs.

Although energy densities of lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) continue to increase, safety problems such as fires and explosions have significantly hindered their large-scale applications. Conventional wisdom tells us the fire of LIBs largely originated from the flammable liquid carbonate solvents, and thus the research on additives with properties of suppressing “liquid-type fire” is the way to fabricate nonflammable batteries. However, the outcome has been proven to be inferior. Here, we carefully examined the evolution of battery fire under thermal abuse condition and found that the “jet fire” caused by flammable gases inside batteries is critical for the fire hazard, and the research effort should be redirected to search proper additives with “gaseous-type fire” suppressing properties. Unfortunately, conventional “gaseous-type fire suppressant” shows poor compatibility with battery electrolytes. Thus, we rationally designed a new kind of supramolecular electrolyte, where the molecules of “gaseous-type fire suppressant” and “SEI&CEI improver” are self-assembled together by intermolecular interactions. Due to this design, the supramolecular electrolyte produces improved cycling stability of Li metal anode and high voltage LiCoO2 cathode (up to 4.4 V). More importantly, it sharply decreases the self-extinguish time of carbonate electrolyte from ∼100 s/g to ∼0 s/g, which is unprecedented and can effectively suppress the “jet fire”, thus preventing the further combustion of commercial pouch cell during thermal runaway. Our work is providing the criteria required to overcome this challenge via supramolecular engineering of the electrolyte, which provides a new way to tune electrolyte functions and may bring numerous new possibilities.

The capacitor–inductor–inductor–capacitor ( CLLC ) converter is a promising topology for bidirectional power conversion applications, such as hydrogen or battery energy storage systems and bidirectional pulsing current charging or heating for electric vehicle (EV) batteries. For these applications, high dynamic constant current control is required. In this article, a novel constant current control method with improved dynamic performance over the conventional proportional–integral (PI) method is proposed for the CLLC converter. In constant current control, the charging and discharging process of the output capacitor determines the dynamic performance. A state trajectory model is proposed for the CLLC converter and is employed to analyze the transient process in the resonant tank. Based on the analysis, a novel dead-band-based control method for the constant current control is proposed. The proposed method can directly and effectively control the charging and the discharging process of the output capacitor, which the conventional PI control method cannot do. As a result, the dynamic performance is improved. The correctness of the proposed state trajectory model, the state trajectory analysis, and the effectiveness of the proposed constant current control method are verified by experiments. Experimental results show that the response time of the proposed method is reduced by more than 50% compared with that of the conventional PI method, with no overshoot.

Smart batteries will penetrate all corners of the new energy field represented by Li-ion batteries. Smart batteries exhibit higher power performance, safety and durability.

There is an urgent need for high-safety and high-energy lithium-ion batteries to satisfy the rapidly increasing need for energy storage. Nickel-rich layered cathodes have been at the forefront of the revolution for batteries due to their relatively high capacity and low cost. However, with the increase of nickel content, the batteries suffer from severe safety concerns, which caused by thermal runaway. Here we show that the ultraconformal cathode-electrolyte interphase (CEI) protective skin with high inorganic content dramatically enhances the safety of high-energy practical Li-ion pouch cells. We find that the robust CEI skin significantly improves the intrinsic thermal stability, mitigates the evolution of oxygen resulting from phase transition, and effectively suppresses the associated parasitic reactions between the delithiated cathodes and electrolyte. The in-situ CEI engineering strategy is simple and suitable for practical industrial manufacture, and it provides design ideas for aggressive nickel-rich cathodes towards safe and high-energy batteries.

In the pursuit of energy-dense all-solid-state lithium batteries (ASSBs), Li-rich Mn-based oxide (LRMO) cathodes provide an exciting path forward with unexpectedly high capacity, low cost, and excellent processibility. However, the cause for LRMO|solid electrolyte interfacial degradation remains a mystery, hindering the application of LRMO-based ASSBs. Here, we first reveal that the surface oxygen instability of LRMO is the driving force for interfacial degradation, which severely blocks the interfacial Li-ion transport and triggers fast battery failure. By replacing the charge compensation of surface oxygen with sulfite, the overoxidation and interfacial degradation can be effectively prevented, therefore achieving a high specific capacity (~248 mAh g −1 , 1.1 mAh cm −2 ; ~225 mAh g −1 , 2.9 mAh cm −2 ) and excellent long-term cycling stability of >300 cycles with 81.2% capacity retention at room temperature. These findings emphasize the importance of irreversible anion reactions in interfacial failure and provide fresh insights into constructing stable interfaces in LRMO-based ASSBs.