Abstract
Separator plays a key role in the safety and performances of lithium-ion batteries with the needs of good thermal stability and wettability. Compared with the commercial separator mainly made by polyolefins in organic solvents, the electrospinning of lignin/polyvinyl alcohol in an aqueous solution has been investigated as a green and economically viable method to produce high-performance separators without any other chemical additives. Lignin/polyvinyl alcohol (mass ratio: 3:7) nanofiber separators outperform commercial polypropylene separators in terms of porosity (71 %), liquid absorption (373 %), and outstanding thermal stability at 200 °C. Additionally, Li-ion battery cells that were constructed using different separators were assessed to demonstrate favorable electrochemical performance. The results showed that fabricated Li-ion battery with Lignin/polyvinyl alcohol (mass ratio: 3:7) nanofiber separators possesses a superior capacitance of 154.1 mA h g−1 at 0.5 C, and maintained outstanding cycle stability after 50 times of charging and discharging process at 0.5 C with the capacitance retention rate up to 98.7 %. The facile and sustainable synthesis strategy of lignin-based separator materials for Li-ion batteries developed in this work provides new perspectives for related research, especially based on environmentally friendly aqueous systems.
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Competing interests: The authors declare that this study does not have any potential conflicts of interest in terms of commercial or financial relationships.
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Research funding: The authors are appreciative of the support of the Science and Technology Planning Project of Guangdong Province (2021A1515010645), and the Key Project of Research and Development Plan of Guangdong Province (2022B0202020002).
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Data availability: All datasets generated for this study are included in the manuscript.
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