Nanostructured Electrodes Via Electrostatic Spray Deposition for Energy Storage System

Abstract

Energy storage system (such as Li-ion battery and supercapacitor) is an important technology that has been widely used for portable electronics, electric vehicles and renewable energy generations. Lots of research has focused on improving its performance, however, many crucial challenges need to be addressed to obtain high performance for further applications. Recently, an electrostatic spray deposition (ESD) technique could be one of the promising technique for electrode formation due to its many advantages, such as simplicity, cost-effective setup, non-vacuum, low temperature deposition conditions, good control for tailoring film composition and morphology, and high deposition efficiency. It provides a simple but versatile strategy for generating single or multi-component materials with varied morphologies, such as sponge-like, dense, porous and fractal, etc. Figure 1 shows the ESD set-up and some typical ESD derived electrode structures and performance. It is belived that controllable morphology, phase and crystalline structure is crucial for the optmization of electrochemical performance in terms of buffering volume change, increasing contact area, shorting ion diffusion passway, etc.. In this presentation, our recent research outcomes related to various ESD derived electrodes for Li-ion batteries and supercapacitors will be summarized and discussed. Figure 1. (a-b) Schematic drawing and actual set-up of ESD; (c) CNT grow on C-MEMS structure; (d-e) porous Sn@carbon composites; (f) porous Li4Ti5O12; (g) NiO confined in cut-CNTs; (h) NiO/graphene composite; (i) cross section of rGO-CNT composite; (j) rate capability of ESD- Li4Ti5O12 electrode. Figure 1