Designing High-Performant Lithium Battery Electrolytes by Utilizing Two Natures of Li+ Coordination: LiTDI/LiTFSI in Tetraglyme

Journal article, 2021

Highly concentrated electrolytes (HCEs) based on glymes, such as tetraglyme (G4), are currently the focus of much battery research, primarily due to their unique properties - especially with respect to ion transport and electrochemical stability. While the LiTFSI-G4 and LiTDI-G4 systems both have been studied extensively, we here design their hybrid electrolytes to answer; will the resulting properties be averages/superpositions or will there be synergies created? We find the latter to be true and demonstrate that the most performant electrolytes are obtained by introducing a minor amount of LiTDI to an LiTFSI based electrolyte, which promotes the disproportionation and formation of "free" cations and at the same to avoid large aggregates - shown comprehensively both experimentally and by different modelling approaches and analyses combined. This electrolyte composition strategy can be generalized to other salts and solvents and thus a route towards a flora of novel battery electrolytes is here suggested.