Phosphazene Based Additives for Improvement of Safety and Battery Lifetimes in Lithium-Ion Batteries

Abstract

There needs to be significant improvements made in lithium-ion battery technology principally in the areas of safety and useful lifetimes to truly enable widespread adoption of large format batteries for the electrification of the light transportation fleet. In order to effect the transition to lithium ion technology in a timely fashion, one promising next step is through improvements to the electrolyte in the form of novel additives that simultaneously improve safety and useful lifetimes without impairing performance characteristics over wide temperature and cycle duty ranges. Recent efforts in our laboratory have been focused on the development of such additives. This paper presents the results of the study of a series of structurally similar phosphazenes that exhibit promise for use as electrolyte additives. This series, termed the SM series, employs cyclic phosphazene trimers with six pendant groups each composed of short chain linear ethers.