Re-evaluation of battery-grade lithium purity toward sustainable batteries.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 38332123.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-024-44812-3 and PMC identifier 10853534.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Recently, the cost of lithium-ion batteries has risen as the price of lithium raw materials has soared and fluctuated. Notably, the highest cost of lithium production comes from the impurity elimination process to satisfy the battery-grade purity of over 99.5%. Consequently, re-evaluating the impact of purity becomes imperative for affordable lithium-ion batteries. In this study, we unveil that a 1% Mg impurity in the lithium precursor proves beneficial for both the lithium production process and the electrochemical performance of resulting cathodes. This is attributed to the increased nucleation seeds and unexpected site-selective doping effects. Moreover, when extended to an industrial scale, low-grade lithium is found to reduce production costs and CO<sub>2</sub> emissions by up to 19.4% and 9.0%, respectively. This work offers valuable insights into the genuine sustainability of lithium-ion batteries.