Revealing Structural Insights of Solid Electrolyte Interphase in High-Concentrated Non-Flammable Electrolyte for Li Metal Batteries by Cryo-TEM

High-concentrated non-flammable electrolytes (HCNFE) in lithium metal batteries prevent thermal runaway accidents, but the microstructure of their solid electrolyte interphase (SEI) remains largely unexplored, due to the lack of direct imaging tools. Herein, cryo-HRTEM is applied to directly visualize the native state of SEI at the atomic scale. In HCNFE, SEI has a uniform laminated crystalline-amorphous structure that can prevent further reaction between the electrolyte and lithium. The inorganic SEI component, Li2S2O7, is precisely identified by cryo-HRTEM. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations demonstrate that the final Li2S2O7 phase has suitable natural transmission channels for Li-ion diffusion and excellent ionic conductivity of 1.2 x 10(-5) S cm(-1).