Mitchell T. Ong

Lithium Ion Solvation and Diffusion in Bulk Organic Electrolytes from First-Principles and Classical Reactive Molecular Dynamics

Lithium-ion battery performance is strongly influenced by the ionic conductivity of the electrolyte, which depends on the speed at which Li ions migrate across the cell and relates to their solvation structure. The choice of solvent can greatly impact both the solvation and diffusivity of Li ions. In this work, we used first-principles molecular dynamics to examine the solvation and diffusion of Li ions in the bulk organic solvents ethylene carbonate (EC), ethyl methyl carbonate (EMC), and a mixture of EC and EMC. We found that Li ions are solvated by either carbonyl or ether oxygen atoms of the solvents and sometimes by the PF6(-) anion. Li(+) prefers a tetrahedrally coordinated first solvation shell regardless of which species are involved, with the specific preferred solvation structure dependent on the organic solvent. In addition, we calculated Li diffusion coefficients in each electrolyte, finding slightly larger diffusivities in the linear carbonate EMC compared to the cyclic carbonate EC. The magnitude of the diffusion coefficient correlates with the strength of Li(+) solvation. Corresponding analysis for the PF6(-) anion shows greater diffusivity associated with a weakly bound, poorly defined first solvation shell. These results can be used to aid in the design of new electrolytes to improve Li-ion battery performance.

Interactive exploration of atomic trajectories through relative-angle distribution and associated uncertainties

Exploration of atomic trajectories is fundamental to understanding and characterizing complex chemical systems important in many applications. For instance, any new insight into the mechanisms of ionic migration in catalytic materials could lead to a substantial increase in battery performance. A new statistical measure, called the relative-angle distribution, has been proposed to understand complex motion - whether Brownian, ballistic, or diffusive. The relative-angle distribution can be represented as a collection of 1D histograms, but is currently created in a slow, offline process, making any parameter exploration a tedious and time-consuming task. Furthermore, the resulting plot can hide uncertainty in both the data and the visualization. As a result, once rastered or printed at a fixed resolution, these histograms can be misleading. We present a new analysis tool for the exploration of atomic trajectories that combines an interactive histogram visualization with uncertainty information for both data and plotting errors, and is also linked to an interactive 3D display of trajectories. Our tool enables a holistic exploration of trajectories previously not feasible, with the potential for significant scientific impact. In collaboration with domain experts, we have deployed our tool ta analyze molecular dynamics simulations of lithium-ion diffusion. Users have found that the tool significantly accelerates the exploration process and have used it to validate a number of previously unconfirmed hypotheses.