Optimizing areal capacities through understanding the limitations of lithium-ion electrodes

By K. Gallagher, S. Trask, C. Bauer, T. Woehrle, S. Lux, Matthias Tschech, P. Lamp, B. Polzin, S. Ha, Brandon R. Long and 4 more. 2016

552 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Increasing the areal capacity or electrode thickness in lithium ion batteries is one possible means to increase pack level energy density while simultaneously lowering cost. The physics that limit use of high areal capacity as a function of battery power to energy ratio are poorly understood and thus most currently produced automotive lithium ion cells utilize modest loadings to ensure long life over the vehicle battery operation. Here we show electrolyte transport limits the utilization of the positive electrode at critical C-rates during discharge; whereas, a combination of electrolyte transport and polarization lead to lithium plating in the graphite electrode during charge. Experimental measurements are compared with theoretical predictions based on concentrated solution and porous electrode theories. An analytical expression is derived to provide design criteria for long lived operation based on the physical properties of the electrode and electrolyte. Finally, a guideline is proposed that graphite cells should avoid charge current densities near or above 4 mA/cm2 unless additional precautions have been made to avoid deleterious side reaction.

Subfields: Automotive Engineering, Electrical and Electronic Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/83d6885233f248a9271f5334a88423a7a26fffec

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In Automotive Engineering

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Citations in the corpus

Interplay of Lithium Intercalation and Plating on a Single Graphite Particle (2021, background): “The ion depletion and concentration polarization in the depth direction of such thick electrode is well understood.(35,70) However, how electrolyte transport in the three dimensional structures affect the competition between Li plating and ion intercalation is yet to be elucidated.”