LITHIUM ORGANIC ELECTROLYTE BATTERIES

Presentazione - Indice

Presentazione

The recent development of sophisticated electronic instruments, the environment contraI and the energy crisis, which require the lise of alternative power sources, have stimulated a very active research of new batteries.
This research has been particularly directed to systems having a high energy to volume (energy density) and energy to weight (specific energy) ratio. This characteristic appears in fact critical in applications such as implanted medical devices, stand-by power and lighting, electronic calculators and watches, as well as electric vehicles and utility load leveling (1).

TABLE I - Annual production of batteries in the world (*) (millions of dollars) [1]
The annual production in 1969 and 1975, respectively, of conventional batteries (i.e. lead-acid) and of new systems, is indicated in Table 1(1). It may be no tic ed how the development of the new batteries has practically doubled in six years. This has to be related to the recent advances in electrodic materials and processing technology. In particular, the ability of using alkali metals, such as lithium and sodium, as negatives, has allowed the realization of high energy electrochemical power sources.

BATTERY	1969	1975
Primary	800	1716
Secondary
lead acid	1500	3263
new	140	280
(*) Exluding Eastern Europe and China.

(1) SALKIND, A. S. : in Proc. Symp. on Electrode Materials and Processes far Energy Conversion and Storage, J. D. E. Me INTYRE, S. SRINIVASAN and F. C. WILL eds., p. 701 (Princeton, Electrochem. Soc. PubI. Co., 1977).

Among these, primary, lithium batteries bave now reached the commercial stage, being largely used in watches, calculators and cardiac pacemakers. The properties of some typical examples of these batteries are summarized in Table II (1). The high values of the energetic parameters justify the present large interest in lithium batteries and make possible to foresee an increasingly larger utilization of these type of power sources in the field of microelectronics.

CATHODE	OCV /DV (*) (V)	RATES ([.LA)	ENERGY DENSITY (Wh dm-3)
(CF)n	3/2.8	100 (medium)	100 (medium)
		20 (Iow)
Ag.CrO.	3/2.4	60 (medium)	570-620
		20 (Iow)
MnO.	3/2.8	150 (medium)	530
SOCI.	3.6/3.4	2-6 (high)	800 (at 200 [LA)
		200 (medium)
(*) OCV = open circuit voltage ; DV = discharge voltage.

Considering this important technological prevision, it has appeared Us of interesting to carry out a systematic research on the behaviour and performance of lithium organic and inorganic electrolyte batteries, examining both known electrodic systems and new cathodic materials. Such a research started in 1973 within the framework of a continuous collaboration between the 'Centro di Studio sui Processi Elettrodici del CNR', at the Institute of Physical Chemistry, Electrochemistry and Metallurgy of the Polytechnic of Milan and the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the University of Rome.
In this book, after a preliminary chapter in which the generaI properties and characteristics of the lithium organic batteries are reviewed, the experimental results obtained in the course of our research on lithium primary systems are described in detail.