As the industry demands for improved energy storage devices such as high-power and high-energy batteries increase, there is a growing interest in electrode structural design and shape fabrication. The optimized structure design can enhance the kinetics of Li-ions by utilizing internal space and electrode surface area. Conventional electrode manufacturing is based on slurry and has limitations in geometric flexibility, including high thickness and aligned structure in the electrode thickness direction. Multiple steps such as coating and drying are inherent in the fabrication process, which are energy and time-intensive. Advanced manufacturing techniques using mechanical tools or electromagnetic fields have been developed for high thickness electrodes with aligned geometry to realize the targeted battery performance, but they employ additional fabrication systems, which seem quite challenging and difficult to scale beyond lab research. Additive manufacturing (AM) is a good alternative to overcome these limitations, which can rapidly create large thick-structured electrodes with multiscale details. There have been several trials to print structured electrodes using AM, but they do not handle electrode geometry and nanomaterial orientation simultaneously.<br/>A new electrode fabrication approach, Structured Electrode Additive Manufacturing (SEAM), is developed to rapidly and efficiently fabricate thick structured electrodes to achieve high-performance batteries. We focused on the multiscale alignment of nanomaterials in through-thickness direction and large-scale structure to fabricate structured electrodes. SEAM utilizes the shear-flow induced in the hot nozzle to orient the nanomaterials in the printing direction. With SEAM and the specific printing pattern, the thick electrodes with alignment structure were fabricated, and they showed a high-specific and areal capacity at high areal current density.

Additive manufacturing of structured electrodes for high-power and high-energy Li-ion batteries

ACS Spring 2022

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.