Improving sustainability of electrochemical energy storage systems adopting novel solutions for different device components

My Ph. D work was focused on sustainable and safer energy storage systems. For that, I’ve considered to increase the overall sustainability of batteries through the implementation of biopolymers and to stabilize the life cycle and stability of lithium metal anodes that guarantees the highest energy density. At the very beginning I studied the implementation of chitosan, a renewable and biodegradable as binder for electrodes processed in aqueous environment and operating in different environments. With the experience gained with chitosan I tried to obtain a separator made of partially biodegradable polymers with phase inversion technique that could also be adopted for industrial production processes. In the end I tried to extend the idea of using biopolymers in batteries components by investigating the feasibility of polymeric electrolyte made of cellulose to increase the sustainability of the cells as well as improving the safety of lithium metal anodes reducing the risk of short circuits and cell failures.