Abstract

Developing Manufacturing Method of Superionic Conductor, Rubidium Silver Iodide, for Use in Solid-State Battery Technology

Due to the increase in electric vehicles(EVs) made by automakers along with an ever-increasing number of consumers interested in EVs due to lower operating costs and concern for the environment, there has been a rise in demand for energy storage devices with high performance, long lifetime and safe operation. Current EVs which use lithium-ion batteries are heavy, are flammable and deplete scarce natural resources in the form of rare earth metals like lithium and cobalt. The solid-state battery technology being developed at the Materials Laboratory at the University of Miami however does not use scarce resources, uses a solid electrolyte that is non-flammable and is drastically lighter in addition to outperforming conventional lithium-ion batteries in a variety of other metrics like maximum power output, charge speed and lifespan. The purpose of my research project was to improve solid-state battery technology to exceed the performance of the conventional lithium-ion battery. To achieve this, research was focused on increasing the energy storage capacity of this solid-state battery technology by developing and optimizing a way to create RbAg₄I₅, a solid electrolyte with the highest known ionic conductivity, as there has been little prior research published on how to synthesize this compound. Previous research showed that synthesizing RbAg₄I₅ with a mole ratio of 1:2 (Rb:AgI) gave the best results. The most significant finding was that a 1:2.5 ratio gave drastically better results, with the electrical conductivity being twice as high as RbAg₄I₅ synthesized with a 1:2 ratio.