A Novel Strategy to Enable Effective Use of Dioxolane-Based Electrolytes in Lithium-Ion Batteries

In this work we reported about the use of an electrolyte for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) based on mixtures of 1,3-dioxolane (DOL) and 1,2,2-tetraethoxyethane (TEG). We showed that the electrolyte 1 M LIFSI in TEG : DOL (2 : 3) displays good transport properties and high thermal stability. Graphite and lithium-iron phosphate (LFP) electrodes used in combination with this electrolyte display high capacity, high efficiency, high-capacity retention at higher C-rates and high stability during prolonged charge-discharge cycles carried in a broad range of temperatures (from -20 degrees C till 60 degrees C). Furthermore, SEI analysis was performed using XPS, FTIR spectroscopy and SEM to understand the morphology of the SEI generated by this electrolyte and analyse them comparatively with the state-of-the-art. We additionally show that this electrolyte can be successfully utilized in lab-scale LIBs, and that these devices display good capacity and stability over 100 cycles at various current densities. Results obtained in this study indicate that the use of mixtures of TEG-DOL is an effective, unexpensive and easy to implement strategy for the utilization of DOL in LIBs.