Intrinsic anion oxidation potentials

Anions of lithium battery salts have been investigated by electronic structure calculations with the objective to find a computational measure to correlate with the observed ( in) stability of nonaqueous lithium battery electrolytes vs oxidation often encountered in practice. Accurate prediction of intrinsic anion oxidation potentials is here made possible by computing the vertical free energy difference between anion and neutral radical (Delta Gv) and further strengthened by an empirical correction using only the anion volume as a parameter. The 6-311+ G( 2df, p) basis set, the VSXC functional, and the C-PCM SCRF algorithm were used. The Delta Gv calculations can be performed using any standard computational chemistry software.