High areal capacity battery electrodes enabled by segregated nanotube networks

Sang-Hoon Park, Paul J. King, Ruiyuan Tian, Conor S. Boland, João Coelho, Chuanfang (John) Zhang, Patrick McBean, Niall McEvoy, Matthias P. Kremer, Dermot Daly, Jonathan N. Coleman () and Valeria Nicolosi ()
Additional contact information
Sang-Hoon Park: CRANN and AMBER research centers, Trinity College Dublin
Paul J. King: CRANN and AMBER research centers, Trinity College Dublin
Ruiyuan Tian: CRANN and AMBER research centers, Trinity College Dublin
Conor S. Boland: CRANN and AMBER research centers, Trinity College Dublin
João Coelho: CRANN and AMBER research centers, Trinity College Dublin
Chuanfang (John) Zhang: CRANN and AMBER research centers, Trinity College Dublin
Patrick McBean: School of Physics, Trinity College Dublin
Niall McEvoy: CRANN and AMBER research centers, Trinity College Dublin
Matthias P. Kremer: CRANN and AMBER research centers, Trinity College Dublin
Dermot Daly: CRANN and AMBER research centers, Trinity College Dublin
Jonathan N. Coleman: CRANN and AMBER research centers, Trinity College Dublin
Valeria Nicolosi: CRANN and AMBER research centers, Trinity College Dublin

Nature Energy, 2019, vol. 4, issue 7, 560-567

Abstract: Abstract Increasing the energy storage capability of lithium-ion batteries necessitates maximization of their areal capacity. This requires thick electrodes performing at near-theoretical specific capacity. However, achievable electrode thicknesses are restricted by mechanical instabilities, with high-thickness performance limited by the attainable electrode conductivity. Here we show that forming a segregated network composite of carbon nanotubes with a range of lithium storage materials (for example, silicon, graphite and metal oxide particles) suppresses mechanical instabilities by toughening the composite, allowing the fabrication of high-performance electrodes with thicknesses of up to 800 μm. Such composite electrodes display conductivities up to 1 × 104 S m−1 and low charge-transfer resistances, allowing fast charge-delivery and enabling near-theoretical specific capacities, even for thick electrodes. The combination of high thickness and specific capacity leads to areal capacities of up to 45 and 30 mAh cm−2 for anodes and cathodes, respectively. Combining optimized composite anodes and cathodes yields full cells with state-of-the-art areal capacities (29 mAh cm−2) and specific/volumetric energies (480 Wh kg−1 and 1,600 Wh l−1).

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-019-0398-y Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natene:v:4:y:2019:i:7:d:10.1038_s41560-019-0398-y

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/nenergy/

DOI: 10.1038/s41560-019-0398-y

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Energy is currently edited by Fouad Khan

More articles in Nature Energy from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().