What is a battery separator?

The battery separator is one of the most essential components that highly affect the electrochemical stability and performance in lithium-ion batteries. In order to keep up with a nationwide trend and needs in the battery society, the role of battery separators starts to change from passive to active.

How to choose a lithium battery separator?

The mechanical strength and thermal stability of the separator are the basic guarantees of lithium batteries’ safety. At the same time, the separator’s high porosity and electrolyte wettability are necessary conditions for the high electrochemical performance of lithium batteries . Fig. 1. (a) Schematic diagram for lithium battery.

Why is a lithium battery separator important?

As one of the essential components of batteries (Fig. 1 a), the separator has the key function of physical separation of anode and cathode and promotes the transmission of ionic charge carriers between electrodes . The mechanical strength and thermal stability of the separator are the basic guarantees of lithium batteries’ safety.

How does a Lithium Ion Separator work?

The small amount of current that may pass through the separator is self-discharge and this is present in all batteries to varying degrees. Self-discharge eventually depletes the charge of a battery during prolonged storage. Figure 1 illustrates the building block of a lithium-ion cell with the separator and ion flow between the electrodes.

Do lithium-ion batteries have a separator membrane?

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) with liquid electrolytes and microporous polyolefin separator membranes are ubiquitous. Though not necessarily an active component in a cell, the separator plays a key role in ion transport and influences rate performance, cell life and safety.

Are cellulose separators good for lithium batteries?

Over the last five years, cellulose-based separators for lithium batteries have drawn a lot of interest due to their high thermal stability, superior electrolyte wettability, and natural richness, which can give lithium batteries desired safety and performance improvement.