Lithium Battery-Powered Extreme Environments Exploring: Principle, Progress, and Perspective

Lithium batteries, holding great potential in future deep-space and deep-sea exploration, have extensively utilized in probes for extreme environments. However, the complex and harsh external physical forces, including radiation field, ultrasonic field, gravity field, magnetic field, temperature field, and other extreme environments, in isolation or combination, demand severe requirements for unique onboard power supplies. Herein, the fundamental understanding of the service behavior of lithium batteries in external extreme physical fields is focused on. Specifically, based on the unique physicochemical principle originated from these external extreme forces, the underlying mechanisms of external physical fields affecting thermodynamic and kinetic processes of liquid phase mass transfer, interface formation and evolution, and electrochemical deposition are emphatically highlighted. Moreover, with equal attention paid to the enhancement and degradation caused by extreme physical fields, recent progress in the service behavior of lithium batteries is thoroughly analyzed. Furthermore, strategies are scrutinized for mitigating the negative impacts of external physical fields and provide an overview of the comprehensive impacts of external muti-physical fields. Finally, the potential challenges and future outlook of developing special power sources for deep space and deep sea exploration are proposed. This review provides fundamental guidance for the future of battery-powered extreme environments exploration.