Flexible Free-Standing and Binder-Free Porous Carbon Cloth (C-Felt) for Lithium-Ion Battery Anodes

Abstract

Interest in the development of flexible free-standing electrodes for wearable batteries is on the rise 1-3. Carbon nanotube (CNT) and graphene films have severally been evaluated to serve as active materials for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). However, CNTs and graphene nano-sized carbon materials are made into a sheet as free standing electrodes through vacuum filtration of a solution of the nano-sized particles. This is a limitation to the mechanical deformation strength of the dispersed particles and thus limits possible applications of the flexible CNT/graphene electrodes. In the present work, un-doped, untreated, flexible freestanding mesh-like carbon cloth (C-Felt) was examined as a potential anode to replace the commonly used powdered graphite composite anodes (GRA) in a full cell Li-ion battery. We compared the discharged capacity performances of LiFePO4/GRA versus LiFePO4/C-Felt full cells of different cathode to anode ratios. Our results show that C-Felt anode presents itself as a potential cost effective, ready to use, lightweight, free-standing and flexible anode material that can be used in a practical full cell. References Janicek, A., Gao, N., Fan, Y., Liu, H., 2015 “High Performance Activated Carbon/Carbon Cloth Cathodes for Microbial Fuel Cells,”, Fuel Cells, 15( 6), pp. 855–861.Hu, L. B., Wu, H., Mantia F. L., Yang, Y., Cui, Y., 2010, “Thin, flexible secondary Li-ion paper batteries,” ACS Nano., 4, pp. 5843-5451.Liu, B., Zhang, J., Wang, X., Chen, G., Chen, D., Zhou, C., Shen, G., 2012, “Hierarchical Three-Dimensional ZnCo2O4 Nanowire Arrays/Carbon Cloth Anodes for a Novel Class of High-Performance Flexible Lithium-Ion Batteries,” Nano Lett., 12, pp. 3005-3011