Novel Battery Systems with Advanced Manufacturing and Electrode Designs

Liu, Yangtao

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Novel Battery Systems with Advanced Manufacturing and Electrode Designs

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With the development of renewable energy, the demand for energy storage is growing rapidly. As the main energy storage solution, the lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) market shows a significant expansion these years and exhibits a steady rising trend in the future. To achieve higher energy density and longer cycle life, the research on LIBs materials has scored tremendous achievements. Many innovative materials have been adopted and commercialized by the industry. However, the manufacturing technology cannot be neglected for more affordable battery products and wider application fields. Here, we have demonstrated a dry printing method to avoid the toxic solvent in the conventional slurry cast method and skip the energy and time-consuming drying process. The total manufacturing cost could be reduced by up to 15% and the unique microstructure could benefit the electrode with better fast-charging ability. The properties of the dry electrodes have been deeply studied which could help the scaling up and the future electrode design. Beyond the state-of-the-art battery, the research on next-generation batteries is also valuable for future energy-storage development. Sodium-ion batteries (SIBs), as an alternative to LIBs, have better cost-efficient by replacing the scarce lithium with abundant sodium. In addition, the organic materials could provide a higher potential for the electrode and composite design with the various functional group and the in-situ growth ability. We have designed a novel carbomethoxy-modified disodium salt (Na2dmcdbq) with good insolubility. When composited with CNTs, it can achieve ultra-high-rate performance (100C) and show good stability at high-rate cycling test (76.8% retention after 35,000 cycles at 40C). Besides the superior performance, organic materials are easy to be disposed or recycled, which paves a more sustainable way for future battery development.

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