Toward High Areal Capacity Lithium Batteries Via 3D Printing: From Liquid to Solid

Abstract

3D-printing has found wide applications in numerous research fields, ranging from mechanical engineering, medicine, and material science to chemistry. Among them, it is capable of fabricating electrodes with high active material loading and improved ion/electron conductivity, and is thereby a promising method to improve the energy and power density of energy storage systems. And this technique offers a fresh viewpoint in designing high loading cathodes and will arise interest in other energy storage devices such as Li-ion batteries, Li-S batteries, and Li-Se batteries, etc. In this talk, I will talk about 3D-printed high active material loading cathode applied in batteries: from liquid to solid.In the first part of this talk, I will introduce 3D-printed high S loading cathode applied in liquid-based Li-S batteries. Compared with conventional cathode fabrication method, a 3D-printed S cathode with grid structure, which could facilitate Li+/e- transport at the macro, micro and nano scale in Li-S batteries. Moreover, a thickness-independent S cathode structure is also proposed via converting thick electrode into thousands of vertically aligned thin electrode by 3D printing. And each thin electrode delivers a constant thickness of around 20 μm, which is not affected by the intrinsic thickness of electrode as well as sulfur loading. Compared with other high S loading Li-S batteries performace, this work demonstrate a similar electrochemical kinetics in spite of the total sulfur loading or thickness of the electrode. [1-2]In the second part of this talk, I will talk about 3D-printed ultra-high Se loading cathode applied in solid-state Li-Se batteries. Compared with other Li-Se work, this work exhibits excellent cycling stability and remarkable rate performance with the highest reported Se loadings of 20 mg cm-2, and also delivers the highest reported areal capacity of 12.99 mA h cm-2 under a current density of 3 mA cm-2. The 3D-printed Se cathodes with grid structure provide large spaces for polymer electrolyte impregnation to further build interconnected Li+ transport channels in thick electrodes, enabling fast Li+ transport in solid-state Li-Se batteries. [3] References [1] X. Gao, X. Sun* et al, Nano Energy , 2019, 56, 595-603.[2] X. Gao, X. Sun* et al, Energy Storage Mater. Doi.org/10.1016/j.ensm.2019.08.001.[3] X. Gao, X. Sun* et al, J. Mater. Chem. A , under revision. Figure 1