900 million vehicles meet the road almost every day around the world. 96% of these vehicles depend on combustion engines and thus fossil fuels for energy. Exhaustion of fossil fuels and emission of green house gases motivates the search for alternative energy sources. New environmental regulations enforces governments to support the use of electric vehicles in order to eliminate green house gas emissions and limit dependency on petroleum products. In order to persuade consumers to use electric vehicles some adjustments on the cost and safety must be done. Being the most expensive component of electric vehicles the main research must be focused on lithium ion batteries.  Since the research on lithium batteries started to hit the bottleneck, the focus must be shifted to novel, environmentally friendly and cheap materials.

Although, LiFePO₄ has been the cathode material of choice (3.5 V vs Li/Li⁺), its conductivity must be enhanced. Another, material from phospho- olivine family, LiMnPO_4,  has drawn attention with its high redox potential and thus energy density (~4.1 V vs. Li/Li⁺). But, it suffers from low conductivity. Silicon being one of the most abundant elements on earth crust and having unbeatable capacity is still the best choice for anode material for high performance lithium ion batteries (4200 mAhg^-1). But, it suffers from mechanical degradation taking place due to volumetric changes arising from lithium alloying/dealloying process. Decreasing the particle size and carbon coating has been visited by many scientists to overcome issues of low mechanical stability and conductivity.

In this project; LiMn_1-xFe_xPO₄-LiFePO₄ cathode will be synthesized by coprecipitation of high potential LiMnPO₄  and high performance LiFePO₄. Partially lithiated Si will be used as an anode material. Synthesized materials will be coated by PEDOT:PSS to improve their electronic conductivities. Electronic conductivity and plasticity will be further improved by exposing the PEDOT:PSS to a plasticizing agent. Polypyrrole chains (PPy) will be electropolymerized onto PEDOT:PSS surface vertically to present pathways for easy diffusion of lithium ions. These conducting polymers will also aid in the overall capacity of the system.

Conducting polymer-inorganic composite cathode (Al-LiMn_1-xFe_xPO₄-LiFePO₄-PEDOT:PSS-PPy) and anode (Cu-partially lithiated Si-PEDOT:PSS-PPy) will be combined to form a full lithium ion battery. The battery whose performance is enhanced by conducting polymers is expected to have an OCV of at least 3.5 V and a total energy density of 300 Wh kg^-1 . The battery will make 1000 charge/discharge cycles at 1C rate by at least 50% capacity retention and 100 charge/discharge cycles at 10C rate by at least 75% capacity retention.