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Materials Design and Preparation for Advanced Electrochemical Storage

Jim Brown

To meet the world's growing energy demand while protecting the environment, the world's reliance on nonrenewable energy sources must be drastically reduced. The ability to efficiently convert, store, transport, and access energy in a variety of ways will be at the heart of this effort. Batteries for small consumer devices have saturated society; however, if they are to be useful in large-scale applications such as automotive transportation or grid-storage, new materials with dramatically improved performance will be required. Efforts must also focus on the use of Earth-abundant and nontoxic compounds to ensure that any developments do not create new environmental problems. To meet the world's growing energy demand while protecting the environment, the world's reliance on nonrenewable energy sources must be drastically reduced. The ability to efficiently convert, store, transport, and access energy in a variety of ways will be at the heart of this effort. Batteries for small consumer devices have saturated society; however, if they are to be useful in large-scale applications such as automotive transportation or grid-storage, new materials with dramatically improved performance will be required. Efforts must also focus on the use of Earth-abundant and nontoxic compounds to ensure that any developments do not create new environmental problems. We describe how the open-circuit voltage of Li-ion batteries can be manipulated and optimised through structural and compositional tuning by taking advantage of differences in electronegativity among possible electrode materials. We then discuss which modern synthetic techniques are the most sustainable, allowing the creation of new materials through environmentally responsible reactions that use the least amount of energy and toxic solvents. Finally, we present a case study that demonstrates how we successfully used these approaches to create a large number of new, useful electrode materials within the recently discovered family of transition metal fluorosulfates. This family has piqued the interest of researchers as a potential source of improved Li-ion batteries in larger-scale applications, and it benefits from a relatively "green" synthesis.