San Diego company Wildcat Discovery Technologies claims to have discovered a set of electrolyte additives which will boost lithium-ion battery performance.
The U.S. firm claims its SuperFilm™ technology will enable a more uniform and stable solid electrolyte interphase (SEI) on cathodes and anodes.
The modular additive concept allows functional additives to be bound to film-forming cores to enable uniform deposition on the electrode surface.
By attaching functional additives the SEI’s stability improves, resulting in increased coulombic efficiency, cycle life, and thermal stability with minimal impact on initial capacity or coulombic efficiency.
Dr. Dee Strand, Wildcat’s Chief Scientific Officer, said: SuperFilm™ was a family of electrolytes built from components with unique combinations of film forming cores and functional group additives that had been tailored to improve cell performance for specific cathodes and voltages.”
Wildcat has validated the performance benefits of SuperFilm™ with a variety of cell chemistries and voltages, including and nickel-rich NMC/graphite cells, Li-CoO, and LMNO/graphite cells.
Both room temperature and high temperature cycle life results were improved in all cases, said the company in a white paper released last month.
Wildcat hopes to license the technology and/or optimise it for specific customer applications via joint development agreements.
