Mof-derived ionic conductor enhancing the performance of polymer electrolyte for solid-state lithium batteries

The solid-state electrolyte is an important component of solid-state batteries and significantly influences the performance of batteries. However, pure solid-state polymer electrolyte has challenges such as low ionic conductivity, weak mechanical strength and poor ability to inhibit lithium dendrites. Therefore, a unique nano porous structural material based on a metal–organic framework (MOF) was proposed as a filler to enhance the polymer electrolyte, which is lithium ionic liquid (Li-IL) immersed into the MIL-125 framework to transform MIL-125 from an inert conductor to an efficient ionic conductor to obtain MIL-125-Li. MIL-125-Li not only has Lewis acid nature, but also provides a more definite and continuous transport pathway for the rapid migration of Li+. The composite polymer electrolytes (CPEs), containing 15 wt% of MIL-125-Li, exhibit an ionic conductivity of 3.9 × 10-4 S cm−1 at 28 °C. Furthermore, the CPEs demonstrate excellent interfacial stability with the lithium metal electrode, effectively inhibiting the growth of lithium dendrites. The assembled symmetric Li/PL-15 % MIL-125/Li battery can be stably cycled for more than 700 h at 0.1 mA cm−2 at 28 °C. Applying the composite polymer electrolyte to LiFePO4/Li batteries, the discharge specific capacity achieves ∼130 mAh g-l with a capacity retention rate of 83.9 % after cycling for 500 cycles at 0.5C. This simple modification method provides a novel design idea for all solid-state lithium batteries with excellent electrochemical performance.