Break
AIChE Annual Meeting
2024
2024 AIChE Annual Meeting
Innovations in Process Engineering
Breakthroughs in Sustainable Chemical Production and Process
Tuesday, October 29, 2024 - 9:12am to 9:30am
As global electrification advances, the demand for safer, energy-dense batteries have become dominant. Conventional batteries containing liquid electrolytes pose serious risks associated with thermal runaway, dendrite formation, and electrolyte leakage. To overcome these challenges, adopting solid-state batteries (SSBs), containing solid electrolytes, is one of the potential solutions due to their safety, high energy density, and prolonged lifespan. However, the low ionic conductivity of solid electrolytes remains one of the most significant challenges preventing their large-scale deployment. The focus of our research is to enhance the ionic conductivity of composite polymer electrolytes (CPEs) containing Ti3C2Tx MXenes. We studied the effect of MXene processing used for the preparation of composite electrolyte and compared the ionic conductivity of electrolytes prepared using MXene flakes separated from suspension via freeze-drying and vacuum filtration. The films were characterized using X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) techniques. It was observed that the freeze-dried MXene-based CPE had an ionic conductivity of 1.09E-3 S/cm, presenting three orders of magnitude enhancement compared to the control sample, which was an MXene-free composite polymer electrolyte comprised of polyethylene oxide (PEO) and lithium bis(triflouromethanesulfonyl)imide (LiTFSI). Most importantly, the freeze-dried ionic conductivity exhibited one order of magnitude greater than the conductivity of the vacuum-filtered MXene-based CPE. This work has shown how significant post-processing techniques are in optimizing the performance of MXene-based solid electrolytes for solid-state battery applications.