(327e) Ion-Containing Polymers for Suppressing Electrochemical Instabilities in Metal Batteries

Advancement in energy storage technologies is imperative owing to the growing demand for portable consumer electronics. In this regard, metal based batteries comprising of a reactive metal (like Li, Na, Al) as anode have gained significant attention because of their promise of improving the anode-specific capacity by 10-fold compared to the current state-of-art Li-ion battery using graphitic anode. However, a fundamental challenge shared across these metal batteries is the complexity of electrochemistry at electrode-electrolyte interfaces that simultaneously impacts the faradaic efficiency, operational rate capability and lifetime. Specifically, in these batteries side reactions between the metallic anode and electrolyte lead to formation of a chemically heterogenous interface that triggers high surface area dendrite-like growth during electrodeposition, ultimately causing battery failure. In this talk, I will discuss a novel strategy to address such interfacial instabilities by designing an polymeric interface to isolate the contact between electrode and electrolyte while incorporating spatially controlled ion transport nanochannels. Such a design of polymeric networks can simultaneously block access to electrolyte, eliminate parasitic reactions, and enable single-ion transport for faster and selective electrochemistry. Complementing these studies, a computational chemistry approach would be utilized to explain the mechanistic processes responsible for the extended stability. Owing to the fundamental nature of our design, we believe, this strategy will open up new avenues for developing ion-containing interfaces in electrochemical systems that share similar mechanisms of instability, e.g., active material dissolution from reactive cathodes.