Electroplating cathodes creates powerful batteries

Researchers at the University of Illinois, Xerion Advanced Battery Corp. and Nanjing University have taken the same process that makes gold-plated jewellery or chrome car accents, known as electroplating, and applied it to lithium-ion battery cathodes.

Traditional lithium-ion battery cathodes use lithium-containing powders formed at high temperatures. The powder is mixed with glue-like binders and other additives into a slurry, which is spread on a thin sheet of aluminium foil and dried. The slurry layer needs to be thin; therefore, the batteries are limited in how much energy they can store. The glue also limits performance.

“The glue is not active — it doesn’t contribute anything to the battery, and it gets in the way of electricity flowing in the battery,” said study co-author Hailong Ning, director of research and development at Xerion Advanced Battery Corp. “You have all this inactive material taking up space inside the battery, while the whole world is trying to get more energy and power from the battery.”

The researchers decided to bypass the powder and glue process altogether by directly electroplating the lithium materials onto the aluminium foil, with the results published in the journal Science Advances. Their work was described by study co-leader Paul V Braun, a professor at the University of Illinois, as “an entirely new approach to manufacturing battery cathodes, which resulted in batteries with previously unobtainable forms and functionalities”.

Since the electroplated cathode doesn’t have any glue taking up space, it packs in 30% more energy than a conventional cathode, according to the study. It can charge and discharge faster as well, since the current can pass directly through it and not have to navigate around the inactive glue or through the slurry’s porous structure. It also has the advantage of being more stable.

This plated aluminium foil rolled up without cracking, suggesting that the electroplating method could enable flexible, three-dimensional battery designs. Image courtesy of Hailong Ning and Jerome Davis III, Xerion Advanced Battery Corp.

Additionally, the electroplating process creates pure cathode materials, even from impure starting ingredients. This means that manufacturers can use materials lower in cost and quality and the end product will still be high in performance, eliminating the need to start with expensive materials already brought up to battery grade, Braun said.

“This method opens the door to flexible and three-dimensional battery cathodes, since electroplating involves dipping the substrate in a liquid bath to coat it,” said co-author Huigang Zhang, a former senior scientist at Xerion who is now a professor at Nanjing University.

The researchers demonstrated the technique on carbon foam, a lightweight, inexpensive material, making cathodes that were much thicker than conventional slurries. They also demonstrated it on foils and surfaces with different textures, shapes and flexibility.

“These designs are impossible to achieve by conventional processes,” Braun said. “But what’s really important is that it’s a high-performance material and that it’s nearly solid. By using a solid electrode rather than a porous one, you can store more energy in a given volume. At the end of the day, people want batteries to store a lot of energy.”

Top image caption: Electroplating can be applied to textured, three-dimensional or flexible substrates, opening the door to new battery designs. The right side of this coin was plated with lithium cobalt oxide. Image courtesy of Hailong Ning and Jerome Davis III, Xerion Advanced Battery Corp.