Abstract
A cost effective and reliable technology for the fabrication of electrochemical test-cell arrays for battery materials research, based on batch-fabricated glass micro packages was developed and tested. Jet dispensing was investigated for the first time as a process for fabricating battery electrode arrays and separators and compared to micro dispense printing. The process shows the reproducibility over the whole range of investigated materials and battery cell structures that is required for battery materials research. Such setup gives rise to a significantly improved reliability and reproducibility of electrochemical experiments. Cost-effective fabrication of our test chips by batch processing allows for their single-use in electrochemical experiments, thereby preventing contamination issues due to repeated use as in conventional laboratory test cells. In addition, the integration of micro pseudo reference electrodes is demonstrated. Thus, the test cell array together with the developed electrode/electrolyte deposition technology provide a highly efficient tool for speedy combinatorial and high throughput testing of battery materials on a system level (full cell tests). Experimental results are shown for the microfabrication of lithium-ion test cells with help of several electrode and binder materials. The influence of jetting parameters on electrode lateral dimensions and thickness, reproducibility of the electrode mass as well as the use of integrated micro-reference electrodes for impedance spectroscopy and cyclic voltammetry measurements in micro cells are presented in detail.
Highlights
Rechargeable batteries are of crucial importance for the transition towards a sustainable energy economy
This paper proposes a breakthrough in electrochemical testing methodology, by much wider use of arrays of battery cells for high throughput tests, which allow the parallelization of potentiometry, amperometry, and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) experiments
The reproducibility of the process was increased during the project significantly for the whole range of investigated materials and can be adapted for any material; Polyvinylidene fluride (PVDF) and CMC-SBR binders were used
Summary
Rechargeable batteries are of crucial importance for the transition towards a sustainable energy economy. The jetting technology was developed for depositing high viscosity solder or silver pastes for the fabrication of solder bumps and interconnection lines (Becker et al 2014; Gu et al 2016): here, fluid is ejected rapidly through a nozzle, using said fluids momentum to break free from the nozzle It is mostly used for small scale production; the main advantages over dispense printing is the much higher speed; there is no need for accurate control of the nozzle height because it is a contactless process. The dispensing and the jetting approach are suitable to evaluate materials in a form close to the battery production since the same electrode paste composition and particle sizes that are relevant for large scale production can be employed Both processes can support the combinatorial and high throughput approach because changing cartridges for different or modified material compositions is straight forward allowing to change material composition during the fabrication of a test cell array. We here investigated the use of LTO MPREs for lithium-ion cells; since LTO is one of the anode materials, it requires no additional fabrication effort
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