Industrial Perspectives on Innovation: Sustainability, Safety, Scalability, and Advanced Performance

Abstract

Industry continues to look forward to innovative and to sustainable solutions that can improve battery performance, safety, and manufacturing efficiency. Livent is looking forward to bringing LIOVIX™ to the market as a product to help meeting these growing requirements while opening pathways for the development of next generation battery technology.LIOVIX™, proprietary lithium metal product, is a unique printable formulation of lithium metal and other specialty materials that can improve the performance of lithium-ion batteries, reduce manufacturing costs, and enable the next generation of battery technology, all while enhancing safety and sustainability.LIOVIX™ can be printed on a battery’s anode during electrode manufacturing in a process called pre-lithiation. Pre-lithiation employs an external, sacrificial source of lithium to offset the first cycle loss of lithium due to SEI formation allowing more efficient use of lithium from the cathode and raising the cell energy density. However, pre-lithiation techniques that are scalable at giga-factory throughput speeds have yet to be demonstrated. LIOVIX™ technology is easily scalable using industry standard coating and printing equipment and is adaptable to any anode or cathode chemistry where an independent source of lithium is required. LIOVIX™ can be used in anodes with a range of silicon content, because lithium loading can be accurately controlled based on the applications’ requirements. Incorporation of this technology has led to higher columbic efficiency at the first cycle, better cell capacity, and longer life batteries. In fact, the application of LIOVIX™ has been demonstrated to improve a battery’s output and to extend its useful life for a variety of battery chemistries (Figure 1).LIOVIX™ is an important technology for the development and commercialization of solid-state batteries using lithium metal. These next generation batteries will address many of the challenges and limitations of today’s liquid electrolyte-based battery systems. LIOVIX™ can be directly printed on current collectors and can act as an anode in solid state batteries. It can also be printed on other anode material to improve the first cycle columbic efficiency and cell performance. It can reduce the interface resistance between anode and solid electrolyte layer.Commercialization of battery systems that use metallic lithium anodes is strongly dependent on the industry’s ability to manufacture these anodes cost effectively at scale. Using LIOVIX printable lithium technology thin lithium foils in the range of 10um – 30um have been demonstrated at the desired width. Figure 1