Ionic liquid based lithium battery electrolytes: fundamental benefits of utilising both TFSI and FSI anions?

Journal article, 2015

Several IL based electrolytes with an imidazolium cation (EMI) have been investigated trying to elucidate a possible beneficial effect of mixing FSI and TFSI anions in terms of physico-chemical properties and especially Li+ solvation. All electrolytes were evaluated in terms of phase transitions, densities and viscosities, thermal stabilities, ionic conductivities and local structure, i.e. charge carriers. The electrolytes with up to 20% of Li-salts showed to be promising for high temperature lithium ion battery application (ca. 100°C) and a synergetic effect of having mixed anions is discernible with the LiTFSI 0.2 EMIFSI 0.8 electrolyte giving the best overall performance. The determination of the charge carriers revealed the SN to be ca. 2 for all analysed electrolytes, and proved the analysis of the mixed anion electrolytes to be challenging and inherently leads to an ambiguous picture of the Li+ solvation.