Cui Guanglei

The research progress of single-ion conducting polymer lithium borate salts

The commercial lithium salt LiPF6 is extremely sensitive to moisture and easy to thermally decompose, which causes a catastrophe especially under high temperature conditions. The lithium borate salts with highly thermal stability and environmental benignancy have been developed and received extensive attention. Research progress of some lithium borate salts including a series of single ion polymeric lithium borate salts as to their synthetic strategies, electrochemical properties, advantages and disadvantages were reviewed in this paper. The perspective concerning application of these lithium borate salts in next-generation lithium batteries was discussed as well.

Highly safe and flame-retardant separators for power lithium ion batteries

The development of alternative transportation such as electric (EV) or hybrid vehicles (HEV) was a key need for sustainable development because of exhausted fossil oil and severe environmental pollution. Hence, its obligatory for us to explore high performance lithium batteries with high-power and necessary safety to power electric vehicles for the future society. Separators play an important role in the performance of batteries, however, commercial polyolefin separators restrict the future development of the power lithium batteries owing to poor dimensional thermal stability. Thus, its a compelling challenge to exploit advanced separators for lithium batteries with high mechanical strength, superior thermal resistance and improved interfacial stability. Herein, this paper simply overviewed the development of separators in recent years and mainly reviewed the progress of our group in highly safe and flame-retardant separators for power lithium batteries. Finally, the outlook concerning the development trend of separators was given, and we hope our work paves the way for exploiting high performance lithium ion batteries in the future.