Inorganic Battery Materials

Solid Electrolyte Interphase in Lithium-Based Batteries

Feifei Shi

Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

and

Philip N. Ross

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA

1. 1 Introduction
2. 2 The Passive Layer on Lithium
3. 3 Catalysis Effect
4. 4 Mechanical Effect
5. 5 Properties of SEI
6. 6 Potential Causes of Controversy during Surface Characterization
7. 7 Future Prospects
8. 8 Acknowledgments
9. Related Article
10. 10 Abbreviations and Acronyms
11. 11 References

1 Introduction

Energy storage is increasingly important in modern times, with intense and widespread demand among most industries, spanning from large‐scale electrical grid storage to electric vehicles and consumer electronics. The high energy density of lithium‐based batteries has revolutionized “wireless” electronic devices and become the dominant technology on the market. After decades of intensive research on each component of Li‐ion batteries, researchers have achieved the theoretical capacity limit and excellent initial performance. However, lithium batteries usually experience degradation over prolonged cycling, which typically leads to undesired capacity loss. In a battery system, the electrode/electrolyte interface is where electronic charge transfer, ion migration, and solvent molecular adsorption/desorption occur. Therefore, it is reasonable to believe that the poor battery cyclability is related to the reversibility of the electrode/electrolyte interface.(1)

Due to the large output voltage of lithium batteries, the electrolyte ...