| dc.description.abstract | Rechargeable batteries are playing an ever important role in the transition to a renewable energy based society. As of today, it is the Li-ion battery which dominates the market for high performance batteries in almost all areas, after having witnessed an immense cost reduction over the past three decades. The cost of Li raw material is however starting to become a significant part of the Li-ion battery cost, which may prevent further cost reduction. This provides a motivation for making batteries similar to the Li-ion batteries, just with much cheaper and widely abundant elements such as Na and Mg. An extra motivation for Mg batteries lies in the hope that they may provide record high volumetric energy densities, due to Mg metal anodes having several good properties. However, a stable Mg cathode with fast Mg diffusion, high voltage and high capacity needs to be found for Mg batteries to succeed.
This thesis compares Li, Na and Mg battery technologies, with the primary focus on density functional theory simulations on Mg in a novel group of 2D materials called MXenes. It consists of five pieces: two published papers with both experimental and computational results, and three unpublished manuscripts without experimental results. The first three pieces investigate Li, Na and Mg intercalation in Ti3C2T2 and V2CT2 MXene and whether MXenes may provide good cathode materials for Mg batteries. The fourth piece of this thesis looks on how much the cost of Li, Ni and Co raw material constitutes of the total battery cost for three common Li-ion batteries. The last piece of this thesis presents Born Haber cycles and some fundamental thermodynamics to compare Li and Mg batteries on a more general basis, with the aim of explaining how come there yet is to be found a high voltage Mg cathode with good diffusion properties.
All in all, this thesis aims to give new insight on three new areas: the feasibility of Mg batteries with MXene cathodes, the feasibility of high voltage Mg cathodes from a more fundamental perspective, and how the raw material costs in today’s Li-ion batteries may provide motivation for Na and Mg battery development. | en_US |
