A clean technique to fabricate the renewable and recyclable metal phosphate anode of the high-capacity lithium-ion battery

Abstract

To reduce pollutants on manufacturing the anodes of lithium ion batteries (LIBs), and to face the challenges on renewing and recycling the end-life anodes, this work was to rapidly fabricate metal phosphate (i.e. Ni3(PO4)2 in this case) binder-free anode by a plasma-assisted electrolytic deposition (PAED) method. After an annealing treatment, the amorphous thin film transformed to a crystalline structure. The 3D-channel structure in the films led the anodes to exhibit high capacity in LIBs cycling tests. To simulate the renewability and recyclability of the end-life anodes, the Ni3(PO4)2 anode after 70 cycles was retreated by PAED which performed the plasma cleaning to get rid of the old active materials via re-growing a new Ni3(PO4)2 thin film. The renewed Ni3(PO4)2 thin film anode showed the same cycling performance as the original one. The nature of the binder-free anodes efficiently simplified the recycling of the end-life active materials. This study revealed that the PAED strategy could be used as an environmental-friendly route to fabricate and renew a high-capacity metal phosphate LIB anode.