Development of Semi-Solid Ion Conductors for Safe, High-Performance Energy Storage Devices

This proposal aims to develop novel semi-solid composite ion conductor and understand the lithium-ion conductive mechanism in the composite through highly collaborative complementary research of experimental and theoretical modeling investigation to enable development of safe, high-performance lithium metal batteries. Experimentally, novel semi-solid inorganic/organic composite ion conductor with multiple tunable functionalities, domain size, and morphology will be developed, and its ion conductivity will be measured. Multiscale phase field models will then be applied to understand the ion transport mechanisms in the semi-solid composite conductors with complex structures and compositions. Concerted morphological and compositional studies, ionic conductivity measurements and computational modeling of ion transport mechanisms at both nanoscale and microscale levels will derive a concrete relationship between the overall ionic conductivity and mesoscale structure parameters in this semi-solid composite ion conductor.