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Updated: May 13, 2026

Identification and Quantification of Decomposition Mechanisms in Lithium-Ion Batteries; Input to Heat Flow Simulation for Modeling Thermal Runaway
Published on: March 7, 2022
Transport properties of lithium hydride at extreme conditions from orbital-free molecular dynamics
L Burakovsky1, C Ticknor, J D Kress
1Theoretical Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA.
Abstract:
We have performed a systematic study of lithium hydride (LiH), using orbital-free molecular dynamics, with a focus on mass transport properties such as diffusion and viscosity by extending our previous studies at the lower end of the warm, dense matter regime to cover a span of densities from ambient to 10-fold compressed and temperatures from 10 eV to 10 keV. We determine analytic formulas for self- and mutual-diffusion coefficients, and viscosity, which are in excellent agreement with our molecular dynamics results, and interpolate smoothly between liquid and dense plasma regimes. In addition, we find the orbital-free calculations begin to agree with the Brinzinskii-Landau formula above about 250 eV at which point the medium becomes fully ionized. A binary-ion model based on a bare Coulomb interaction within a neutralizing background with the effective charges determined from a regularization prescription shows good agreement above about 100 eV with the orbital-free results. Finally, we demonstrate the validity of a pressure-based mixing rule in determining the transport properties from the pure-species quantities.
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