Nauka /Interperiodica

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1023-1935/05/4101-
© 2005 
åÄIä “Nauka
/Interperiodica”
0001
 
Russian Journal of Electrochemistry, Vol. 41, No. 1, 2005, pp. 1–16. Translated from Elektrokhimiya, Vol. 41, No. 1, 2005, pp. 3–19.
Original Russian Text Copyright © 2005 by Kanevskii, Dubasova.
INTRODUCTION
The development and commercialization of lithium-
ion batteries (LIB), which made it possible to realize
the high-energy possibilities of rechargeable lithium
batteries, are amongst the most noticeable achieve-
ments of modern theoretical and applied electrochem-
istry within the last decade. Owing to the intensive
research conducted during this time period the world
over, it proved possible to reach an energy density
exceeding 190 W h kg
–1
at a satisfactory cycle life of
LIB [1].
The number of research works in the field of LIB
approaches five thousand. Research into the problem of
LIB in the first years after the appearance of LIB at the
beginning of the 1990s was mostly of phenomenologi-
cal nature. The attention was focused on the search for
perspective materials for positive and negative elec-
trodes that would be capable of deep reversible interca-
lation of lithium into the bulk of electrodes, the selec-
tion of effective electrolytes compatible with electrode
materials. The investigations resulted in the creation of
workable LIB and the organization of their small-scale
production [2, 3].
Later, the researchers, having switched to investiga-
tion of basic regularities of the lithium intercalation,
establishment of dependences between micro- and
macrostructure of electrode materials and their capabil-
ity to intercalation, stumbled upon a very unpleasant
property of LIB, namely, the decrease in their energy
density and reversible capacity both during cycling and
after storage. The problem of achieving high character-
istics and ensuring time stability reached a climax after
LIB started to be considered as batteries for such high-
power and high-energy consumers as objects of space
technology; special military objects of various profiles;
and every kind of transport, including trucks, etc. The
problem of stability of LIB acquired special sharpness
for the objects and fields of application where, due to
conditions of exploitation, a broad range of tempera-
tures is envisaged.
This may be viewed as an explanation for a consid-
erably increased number of research works upon LIB
devoted to both the phenomenology of the worsening of
exploitation characteristics of a LIB as a whole and of
each individual electrode and a profound investigation
of the reasons for and the mechanism of such a worsen-
ing and the search for its removal (or, at the very least,
for the ways to decrease its speed). It would be of inter-
est to make an analysis of the subject matter of reports
delivered at various International Meetings on Lithium
Batteries. Whereas at the 6th Meeting (1992, Muenster,
FRG), at which the subject matter of LIB was in
essence broadly sounded out for the first time, and at
the 7th Meeting (1994, Boston, USA), the question of
the decrease in the capacity of LIB was touched upon
merely in two reports at each meeting [4–7], at the 10th
Meeting (2000, Como, Italy), there were already nine
such communications, while at the latest, 11th, Meeting
(2002, Monterey, USA), the number of various reports
connected to one degree or another with the problem of
the stability of LIB exceeded thirty [17–49].