Toward Commercial Cylindrical Anode Free Li-Metal Batteries: Electrochemical Study and Improvement

Abstract

Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) are one of the favorite energy storage devices that are applied to mobile and stationary energy storage applications. The widespread use of Li-ion batteries requires an increase in the energy density of each battery cell. Anode-free Li-ion Batteries (AFLIBs) are new types of LIBs models that offer high energy density. However, there are still many challenges in fabricating AFLIBs toward commercial use, mainly improving the battery cycle and the efficiency of intercalation/deintercalation of Li-ion between two electrodes. In this research, the fabrication of AFLIBs is studied, optimized, and integrated with cathode materials to be commercial cylindrical full-cell LIBs. The comparison of an active cathode material between LiFePO4 (LFP) and NMC622 showed that NMC622 performed better than LFP. The optimum condition of cathode materials coating thickness is 200 microns achieving 2.75 mAh cm-2 of area capacity. Furthermore, the gold platting strategy is proposed to modify the Cu foil surface to improve the electrical performance and stability of AFLBs. As a result, the control gold plating with 5 nm thickness increases the full-cell capacity of AFLBs to 142.89 mAh g-1 with a capacity retention percentage of 95.41% after five cycles.