Mass and Charge Transport in Cyclic Carbonates: Implications for Improved Lithium Ion Battery Electrolytes

The compensated Arrhenius formalism (CAF) is applied to conductivity and diffusion data for a family of cyclic carbonates composed of octylene carbonate, decylene carbonate, undecylene carbonate, and dodecylene carbonate. The strong intermolecular interactions in these liquids lead to diffusion activation energies that are higher than those for typical aprotic solvents. The conductivity results show that activation energies are similar between TbaTf and LiTf cyclic carbonate electrolytes. However, the conductivities of the TbaTf solutions are higher than those for the LiTf solutions, and this is attributed to the greater number of charge carriers in the TbaTf electrolytes. These CAF results are then used to give a possible explanation of why the ionic conductivity in lithium ion battery electrolytes is often optimized by mixing a cyclic carbonate with a lower viscosity liquid.