Lithium-ion battery electrolyte emissions analyzed by coupled thermogravimetric/Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy

In the last few years the use of Li-ion batteries has increased rapidly, powering small as well as large applications, from electronic devices to power storage facilities. The Li-ion battery has, however, several safety issues regarding occasional overheating and subsequent thermal runaway. During such episodes, gas emissions from the electrolyte are of special concern because of their toxicity, flammability and the risk for gas explosion. In this work, the emissions from heated typical electrolyte components as well as from commonly used electrolytes are characterized using FT-IR spectroscopy and FT-IR coupled with thermogravimetric (TG) analysis, when heating up to 650 °C. The study includes the solvents EC, PC, DEC, DMC and EA in various single, binary and ternary mixtures with and without the LiPF6 salt, a commercially available electrolyte, (LP71), containing EC, DEC, DMC and LiPF6 as well as extracted electrolyte from a commercial 6.8 Ah Li-ion cell. Upon thermal heating, emissions of organic compounds and of the toxic decomposition products hydrogen fluoride (HF) and phosphoryl fluoride (POF3) were detected. The electrolyte and its components have also been extensively analyzed by means of infrared spectroscopy for identification purposes.