A comparative study on polypropylene separators coated with different inorganic materials for lithium-ion batteries

Coating commercial porous polyolefin separators with inorganic materials can improve the thermal stability of the polyolefin separators and hence improve the safety of lithium-ion batteries. Several different inorganic materials have been studied for the coating. However, there lacks a study on how different inorganic materials affect the properties of separators, in terms of thermal stability and cell performance. Herein, we present such a study on coating a commercial polypropylene separator with four inorganic materials, i.e., Al₂O₃, SiO₂, ZrO₂ and zeolite. All inorganic coatings have improved thermal stability of the separators although with differences. The coating layers add 28%-45% of electrical resistance compared with the pure polypropylene separator, but all the cells prepared with the coated polypropylene separators have the same electrical chemical performance as the uncoated separator in terms of rate capability and capacities at different temperatures.