Recent safety incidents involving the Boeing 787 Dreamliner highlight the lack of fundamental understanding of the root cause of lithium ion battery (LIB) failures.  Failure modes leading to thermal runaway in LIBs (overcharge, overheat, internal short, etc.) are well established.   However, the underlying link is unclear between the origins of instability at the electrode/electrolyte interfaces leading to nucleation and growth of unstable lithium dendrites and the susceptibility to failure.  In this talk, we will show in-situ optical microscopy results for imaging Li dendrites (Figure 1). The morphologies of metallic lithium dendrites are determined in different environments for electrolyte concentration, current density and most notably temperature.  The experimental results will be related to recent theoretical modeling by Akolkar. [J. Power Sources 246 (2014) 84-89.]

Nucleation and growth of lithium dendrites at sub-ambient temperatures

247th National Meeting (2014)

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