Contact:
Senior Researcher Didier Blanchard, Department of Energy Conversion and Storage (dibl@dtu.dk)
Energy storage is an increasingly important element for the development towards society based on sustainable energies. Energy storage in batteries will be a part of the solution within the transportation and energy sectors, but this demands the development of better batteries, in terms of energy capacity, cost and safety, than the present lithium based batteries. Development of solid electrolytes to replace the volatile liquid electrolytes in today’s lithium ion batteries, would improve safety, life-time and energy density. However, this is one of the more challenging tasks in battery research.
Lithium borohydride (LiBH4) shows high lithium ionic conductivity at temperature above 110 oC and we recently found that this high conductivity can be kept at room temperature by nano-confining LiBH4 in mesoporous scaffolds, opening a new strategy to develop the highly wanted all-solid state batteries.
In this project, you will investigate the properties of different solid electrolytes for lithium batteries based on LiBH4 ball-milled with SiO2 or Al2O3 mesoporous scaffolds. We recently discovered that the interaction of the scaffold surfaces with LiBH4 is a crucial parameter and we anticipate that appropriate heat treatment of the surface combined with the maximization of the interface between the two components should lead to unprecedented high conductivities.
A part from the synthesis by mechanical milling, you will characterize the sample using differential scanning calorimetry, X-ray diffraction and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy.
Nanoconfined LiBH4 in mesoporous silica scaffold showing high diffusion of Li+