A Method for Preparing Surface Fluorinated Battery Materials

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This invention provides a method for preparing battery materials (such as cathodes, anodes, solid electrolytes, or current collectors) that have a nanometer-sized fluoride coating on their surface. The process uses mild, non-toxic, non-corrosive, and non-flammable gases (such as hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, hydrochlorofluorocarbons, and chlorofluorocarbons) in a precisely controlled vertical-flow reactor to fluorinate the battery materials. This results in a uniform and stable coating that enhances the material's performance and stability, while being scalable and much safer than traditional fluorination methods using hazardous gases like HF or F2.

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• Manufacturing high-performance lithium-ion and sodium-ion batteries for electric vehicles and consumer electronics.
• Producing safer, longer lasting, all-solid-state batteries for energy storage applications such as renewable energy integration or grid storage.
• Improving recyclability and reusability of existing greenhouse gases (e.g., hydrofluorocarbons, chlorofluorocarbons) by converting them to useful fluorination agents in battery production.
• Protecting battery components, such as current collectors (aluminum, copper), from corrosion and degradation in high-voltage or long-cycle battery environments.
• Enhancing battery anode materials (including lithium metal and carbon-based anodes) to suppress dendrite formation and improve cycling safety.

BenefitsContent extracted from patent full text and abstract with AI.

• Enables fine-tuning and precise control over the fluorination process, resulting in uniform and nanoscale surface coatings.
• Uses mild, non-toxic, non-corrosive, and non-flammable gases, greatly improving workplace safety and environmental handling compared to conventional methods.
• Improves battery life, stability, and performance (e.g., higher charge/discharge capacity retention and voltage stability) by reducing surface degradation and side reactions.
• Scalable and compatible with industrial production processes, supporting mass-manufacture of advanced batteries.
• Offers an environmentally friendly means of using and breaking down potent greenhouse gases and ozone-depleting chemicals, aligning with sustainability goals.

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Patent Abstract

The object of present innovation is to use mild fluorinating agents, such as hydrofluorocarbons - HCFs, perfluorocarbons - PFCs, hydrochlorofluorocarbons - HCFCs and chlorofluorocarbons - CFCs, to fine-tune the fluorination process in battery material preparation in order to obtain uniform nanometer sized surface fluoride coated battery materials. The use of vertical flow type reactor permits a fine-tuning of the fluorination process by accurately regulating the active gas or mixture of gases flow over battery materials using mass-flow regulators, and precisely setting the temperature with vertical tube furnace. Additionally, these fluorinating agents have slightly different reactivity, decomposing and reacting with battery materials at different temperatures, and therefore, offering additional parameter of fluorination fine-tuning. The suggested method is scalable and can be easily adapted as an industrial solution. Moreover, all these gases are non-toxic, non-corrosive and non-flammable gases at room temperatures, hence, they are more convenient to handle than highly-toxic and highly-corrosive HF and F2.