The ZVO (German Surface Technology Association) has been awarding scholarships for the Master's degree course in Electrochemistry and Electroplating at TU Ilmenau since 2018. The master's thesis of this year's scholarship holder Michael Witt is entitled "Anode free lithium metal batteries based on locally high concentrated sulfolane electrolytes" and deals with the influence of different electrolyte compositions on the structure-property relationships of metallic lithium electrodes.
Topic lithium metal electrodes
In his Master's thesis, Michael Witt worked out the correlations between electrolyte composition and structure-property relationships. His work, which was carried out in close cooperation with the company Umicore (Belgium), makes important contributions to the improvement of lithium metal electrodes and to the understanding of SEI formation in these systems.
Energy efficiency of lithium-ion batteries
To increase the specific energy of lithium-ion batteries (LIB), metallic lithium as an active material for the negative terminal would be a promising candidate. Unfortunately, there are numerous problems with the implementation of this approach, including the formation of dendrites and inactive lithium in cyclic operation. The formation of the solid electrolyte interphase (SEI) in parallel with lithium deposition further complicates the situation.