A Combinatorial Approach toward the Discovery of Electrolyte Formulations for Non-Aqueous Electrochemical Energy Storage Devices

A unique robot-type instrument is herein described capable of producing large numbers of non-aqueous electrolyte mixtures involving the most common organic carbonate solvents either currently in use or being considered by the Li-ion battery industry. The ability of this device to accurately dispense computer-controlled mixtures of often highly volatile solvents was validated by comparing the intended formulations against data collected by gas-chromatography-mass spectrometric analysis which yielded results within 3.5% of each other. Key to the success of this powerful combinatorial strategy was the use of temperature-controlled reservoirs to decrease the vapor pressure of the solvents involved, as well as the selection of an appropriate solvent and technique to prevent solvent mixing during the aspiration-delivery steps. © The Author(s) 2015. Published by ECS. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (CC BY, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse of the work in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. [DOI: 10.1149/2.0081509eel] All rights reserved.