Background

To meet trends such as the rise of electric vehicles, significant advances in the energy storage capability of batteries are urgently required. Most research has focused on the development of high-capacity electrode materials.

Trinity College Dublin researchers have focused on improvements in the following areas:

High Areal Capacity Electrodes: This research optimizes electrode architecture to maximize the electrode areal capacity. Above a critical thickness, existing solution processed particulate films have mechanical instabilities (i.e. they can crack) which leads to failure.

High-capacity Silicon Anodes: This is a new class of conductive binder to fabricate high-capacity Si/2D conductive materials electrodes without any additional polymer or Carbon black. Traditional polymeric binder is not mechanically robust enough to withstand the stress induced during lithiation/delithiation. This leads to severe disruption of the conduction networks. This results in rapid capacity fade and poor lifetime.

Technology Overview

For the high areal capacity electrodes, segregated carbon nanotube membranes are used to increase the maximum thickness of electrodes with increased mechanical stability. This allows for the increase of areal capacitance and, therefore, improves battery energy density.

The formation of segregated nanotube (CNT) networks enable extremely thick and high areal capacity battery composite electrodes, and this provides a simple method to produce both high areal capacity anodes/cathodes from any high-performance materials (e.g. graphene-wrapped silicon nanoparticles and LiNi_xMn_yCo_zO₂)

This technology behind the high-capacity silicon anodes uses MXene inks, titanium carbide (Ti3C2Tx) and carbonitride (Ti3CNTx) as the conductive binder for producing high-capacity nanoscale Si/MXene electrode

Further Details:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-08383-y

Benefits

Electrodes

Increased mechanical properties:
- Supresses mechanical instabilities
- Allows the fabrication of electrodes with thicknesses of up to 600 μm.
Very high conductivity.
Fast charge distribution within the electrodes.
Cells with extremely high areal capacities (18 mAh cm-2) and energy densities (450 Wh kg-1).
Compatible with current industrial manufacturing process (slurry casting method)
Applicable to both Li and Na ion batteries

Anodes

Radically improve the energy density of Li-ion batteries by replacing the state-of-the-art current electrodes with a novel MXene composite.
Negates the need for the binder and conductive additives found in today’s electrodes.
Compatible with the existing technologies and processes.
The estimated energy density in full-cells is : 250 Wh/kg (traditional) vs 450 Wh/kg (our MX/Si).

Applications

Deep cycle and starter batteries
Can be used in many battery types and shapes
Adaptable to emergent battery technologies e.g. printed microbatteries

Such batteries have a broad range of possible applications including electric vehicles and consumer electronics.

Opportunity

Research collaboration
Available to License

High Areal Capacity Electrodes and High-Capacity Silicon Anodes

Patents

IP Status

Seeking