Creating a Lithium Ion Battery Separator for Stretchable Electronics

This thesis research project seeks to provide an investigation to find the most appropriate organogel serving as a lithium ion battery separator that is compatible with stretchable electronics. Separators play a key role in all batteries. Their main function is to keep the positive and negative electrodes apart to prevent electrical short circuits and at the same time allow rapid transport of ionic charge carriers that are needed to complete the circuit during the passage of current in an electrochemical cell [1].Li-ion batteries have become important in the field of electronic industry due to their advantages like compactness, lightweight, high operational voltage and providing highest energy density. Typical Li-ion battery has a cathode (LiCoO2, LiMnO2, LiFePO4 etc.), an anode (graphite, graphene, carbon nanotubes, carbon nanofibers, lithium titanium oxides etc.) and a separator [1]. The separator provides an electrical insulation between anode and cathode and allows ion transfer during operation. It also plays a significant role in determining battery performance. The performance of the Li-ion battery separator is determined by several factors such as permeability, porosity, electrolyte uptake capacity, mechanical, thermal and chemical stability. Several commercially available polymers have been used as separators and the most common polymers are poly(ethylene), poly(propylene), poly (ethylene oxide), poly(acrylonitrile), poly (methyl methacrylate) and poly (vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) [3]. In this project, organogels were chosen because of their flexible, semi-permeable and reliable bendable characteristics which becomes useful in stretchable batteries. The first part is to use Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) which belongs to a group of polymeric organosilicon compounds that are commonly referred to as silicones, then mixed with hexane and sucrose solvents to make the required organogel. Different organogels from PDMS and Dragon skin in different amounts and conditions were created and tested to see what works best in stretchable lithium batteries, thus improving the battery’s efficiency and life cycle. Ion conductivity values were obtained after running the Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy Test. Graphs produced after this test proved that the most effective combination to use was at a porosity of 0.8, at a ratio of Sucrose: PDMS wt Ratio of 5: 0.764 respectively. The future endeavors of this project will involve working with reduced cell thickness so as to reduce the overall distance traveled by the ions, which also reduces the overall cost of making each separator.