Thermally conductive separator with hierarchical nano/microstructures for improving thermal management of batteries
Name
thermally conductive battery separator_manuscript_revised_nano energy - for MIT.pdf
Size
1.18 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
c257feb377373cfafaa3fa3f772a6efa
Author(s)
Yang, Yuan
Huang, Xiaopeng
Cao, Zeyuan
Chen, Gang
Date Issued
February 2016
Journal
Nano Energy
Publisher
Elsevier
Citation
Yang, Yuan et al. “Thermally Conductive Separator with Hierarchical Nano/microstructures for Improving Thermal Management of Batteries.” Nano Energy 22 (April 2016): 301–309 © 2016 Elsevier Ltd
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
Thermal management is critical to improving battery performance and suppressing thermal runaway. Besides developing external cooling technologies, it is important to understand and control thermal transport inside batteries. In this paper, heat transfer inside batteries is first analyzed and the thermal conductivity of each component is measured. The results show that low thermal conductivity of the separator is one major barrier for heat transfer in Li-ion batteries. To improve thermal conductivity of the separator, a hierarchical nano/micro-Al₂O₃/polymer separator is prepared with thermal conductivity of ~1 W m⁻¹ K⁻¹, representing an enhancement of 5× compared to commercial polyethylene-based separators. Modeling has been performed to understand mechanism behind the enhancement of thermal conductivity, which suggests that addition of nanoparticles significantly reduces thickness of polymer coating on micron-sized Al₂O₃ particles and thus increase the thermal conductivity of the composite separator. This Al₂O₃-based separator also has similar ionic conductivity with commercial polymer separators. Such composite separator may have potential applications in developing batteries with better performance and safety. Keywords: Thermal conduction; Batteries; Nanocomposite
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nanoen.2016.01.026
