Additive Manufacturing of Li-Ion Batteries: A Comparative Study between Electrode Fabrication Processes

摘要

Additive manufacturing strategies are gaining more importance in the contextof lithium-ion batteries. The rapid prototyping, reduced waste and complex3D structures achievable are powerful and attractive tools that are out of thereach of current fabrication techniques. Additionally, thanks to the potentialthat these manufacturing techniques hold for the fabrication of micro-energystorage devices, they are gaining increasing attention in the literature. Here,some of the more common additive manufacturing techniques are comparedto standard methodologies by systematically evaluating their electrochemicalperformance and correlating it with the physical changes induced by theprinting process. By using LTO/CNT-based inks, it is observed that the innerarrangement of the conductive additive is significatively altered depending onthe technique used and that this has an impact on the rate performance ofthe device. By using a model that links the capacity-rate data to the physicalproperties of the batteries, it is possible to find the limiting factor on theprinted electrodes and correlate it with the material arrangement that eachtechnique produces.