Development of green electrode process technology for high power lithium-ion battery

Abstract

The present work reports on fabrication and electrochemical evaluation of LiFePO4/C based composite electrode for lithium ion battery using aqueous medium with carboxymethyl cellulose and citric acid as biomass derived sustainable binder materials. The composite electrode was prepared by dispersing the LiFePO4/C and acetylene black powders in aqueous suspension of carboxymethyl cellulose and citric acid with fractional weight ratio of 80:10:10 (w/w %). The carboxymethyl cellulose with citric acid additive significantly improved the cyclic performance of the composite cathode with specific capacity of 85 mAhg-1 and 65 mAhg-1 at 4 C and 5 C-rates respectively and good capacity retention with 100 mAhg-1 after 50 cycles at 1 C discharge rate. The improved performance was attributed to good adhesion and excellent dispersion of particles within the composite electrode. This work demonstrated that switching to water based production process could reduce the manufacturing cost significantly with additional advantage of safety, performance, and more importantly environmental benign electrodes for lithium ion battery.

Keywords

• Green electrode
• carboxymethyl cellulose
• citric acid
• LFP
• lithium ion battery