Ricerc@Sapienza

The IDEMA project tackles the study of the failure mechanisms, and their mitigation, for a high-capacity lithium-ion battery with innovative formulation, constituted by a cobalt-free positive electrode, a silicon-based negative electrode and an advanced aprotic electrolyte. The IDEAMA project will last 24 months and will imply the cooperation of three permanent Sapienza Staff (Sergio Brutti, Alessandro Latini and Domenico Stranges), one non-permanent PhD student (Alessio Luongo) and one non-permanent post-doc (to be hired, assegno di ricerca).
The project tackles four parallel closely interacting activities related to four different secondary goals. These research activities (workloads) are illustrated and described below.
The main goals of the project are:

1) To study the fundamental chemical mechanisms underneath the irreversible degradation of the battery constituents (i.e. electrodes, electrolytes) leading to gas release upon thermal abuse.

2) To develop mitigation strategies to improve the thermal stability of the proposed battery formulation.

The project is organized in four workpackages led by the three permanent staff memebers from Sapienza.

In summary this project tackles the study of the parasitic chemistry leading to gas release and its mitigation for an innovative LIB formulation. We adopt a bottom-up approach starting from the unexplored analysis of the thermal degradation of electrodes/electrolytes and then approaching the monitoring of gas release in full LIBs under realistic experimental cycling conditions. Once done we extend this study to further enhanced LIBs where mitigation strategies have been incorporated in the cell formulation.