Due to their compact size and low weight, thin film batteries are needed for numerous biomedical devices. However, concerns regarding their safety, low capacity and high cost continue to limit their broad adoption. One of the approaches that has been shown to address these concerns and challenges is the replacement of traditional separator materials (e.g. ceramics) with a novel dendrite-suppressing Kevlar-derived aramid nanofiber (ANF) based ion conductive polymer composite. We describe, herein, a microfluidic-based scalable method for the fabrication of tunable, and continuous, ANF based polymer composite films. By exploiting the laminar flow regimes occurring at the micro-scale; we are able to fabricate ANF composite films of varying physical (e.g. thickness, width, length) and chemical (e.g. ionic conductivity) properties by simply modifying the geometry of the device or flow rates of the solutions, and/or introducing chemical reactants or additives, respectively. By applying this methodology, we have successfully fabricated continuous ANF films with a uniform thickness and micro/millimeter scale widths. We are currently using our laminar flow-based method to form ion conductive polymer composite films containing both ANF and poly(vinyl alcohol) at centimeter-scale widths.

Laminar flow-based fabrication of thin film battery separators from aramid nanofibers

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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