Performance of developed natural vein graphite as the anode material of rechargeable lithium ion batteries

Abstract

Electrochemical performance of natural vein graphite as an anode material for the rechargeable Li-ion battery (LIB) was investigated in this study. Natural graphite exhibits many favorable characteristics such as, high reversible capacity, appropriate potential profile, and comparatively low cost, to be an anode material for the LIB. Among the natural graphite varieties, the vein graphite typically possesses very high crystallinity together with extensively high natural purity, which in turn reduces the cost for purification. The developed natural vein graphite variety used for this study, possessed extra high purity with modified surface characteristics. Half-cell testing was carried out using CR 2032 coin cells with natural vein graphite as the active material and 1 M LiPF6 (EC: DMC; vol. 1:1) as the electrolyte. Galvanostatic charge–discharge, cyclic voltammetry, and impedance analysis revealed a high and stable reversible capacity of 378 mA h g−1, which is higher than the theoretical capacity (372 mA h g−1 for LiC6). Further, the observed low irreversible capacity acquiesces to the high columbic efficiency of over 99.9%. Therefore, this highly crystalline developed natural vein graphite can be presented as a readily usable low-cost anode material for Li-ion rechargeable batteries.