Yifei Mo

Yifei Mo

Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Maryland.

New Oxyhalide Electrolyte Breaks Barriers for Solid-State Battery Performance

1 minute read

Published:

A team led by Professor Yifei Mo, working with the University of Western Ontario and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has developed a new class of oxyhalide solid electrolytes that combine fast lithium-ion transport with strong chemical stability — two properties that have historically been difficult to achieve in the same material.

The work, published in Science, reports a crystalline lithium oxyhalide electrolyte with a room-temperature ionic conductivity of 13.7 mS/cm, rivaling commercial liquid electrolytes, while remaining stable at cathode voltages up to 4.9 V and at temperatures as low as -50 °C.

Sulfide electrolytes conduct lithium ions well but are chemically unstable; oxides are stable but conduct poorly; halides fall in between. Mo’s group addressed this by mixing oxygen and chlorine anions within a single crystal lattice, combining the stability of oxides with the mechanical properties of halides while enabling the kind of favorable lithium-ion packing normally seen only in sulfides.

“By mixing the two, we can achieve the best of all chemistries.” — Yifei Mo

Batteries built with the new electrolyte sustained over 4,000 charge cycles with minimal capacity loss and, unlike sulfide electrolytes, showed good resistance to moisture — an advantage for manufacturing.

Read the full story at the UMD MSE news page.

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