(258f) Composite Metal Oxide/Nanocarbon Materials As High Performance Anodes for Next-Generation Automotive Li-Ion Batteries

Alessandro Palmieri, Mengchen Liu, Ying Liu, Neil Spinner and William E. Mustain

Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT 06269-3222

Lithium ion batteries play a significant role in mobilizing technology; however, to make the leap to automotive and grid storage materials with higher energy density are needed.  Therefore, the Li battery anode material is a highly active area of research.  Unfortunately, some of the most widely investigated material have either limited stability (silicon) or low capacity (graphite). Therefore new solutions have to be investigated to increase the energy density of lithium ion batteries (>300 Wh/Kg) while not sacrificing their stability and cycling performance compared to state-of-the-art systems.

In recent years, our group has focused on advancing metal oxide-based anode materials toward automotive targets.  In this poster, we will show how metal oxide material chemistry and structure influences the reversible capacity and cycleability of Li-ion anodes through both physical and electrochemical characterization including identical-location TEM.  We will also show how the electronic conductivity of the electrode plays a critical role in the achievable capacity and retention.  This poster will focus on recent advances where several metal oxides have been enhanced by alloying, impregnation with metallic nanoparticles, or complexation with nanosized advanced carbons such as carbon nanotubes and graphene – leading to very high reversible capacity (> 700mAh/g) and long cycle life (several 100 cycles).