Thickness gradient promotes the performance of Si-based anode material for lithium-ion battery

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel thickness-gradient electrode design for silicon-based anodes in lithium-ion batteries, significantly improving performance by reducing stress concentration during volume changes.

Contribution

It proposes and experimentally verifies a new gradient thickness strategy to mitigate silicon's volume change issues, enhancing battery performance.

Findings

Enhanced capacity and retention

Improved Coulombic efficiency

Better rate capability

Abstract

The large volume change of the silicon (Si) during lithiation and delithiation process has long been a problem impeding its application as one of the most promising anode materials for LIBs. In this paper, we proposed a conceptually new idea to address this problem simply by varying the thickness of the electrode material film. The resulting thickness-gradient electrode exhibits considerable enhancement in the electrochemical performances including capacity, capacity retention, Coulombic efficiency, and rate capability in comparison to the traditional counterparts with uniform thickness. Such enhancement in the electrochemical performance can be attributed to the lessening of the stress concentration on the interface between the electrode film and the current collector upon the volume change of Si taking place in the lithiation and delithiation process. To make the best use of this strategy, optimal design of the gradient thickness is proposed based on the theory of stress homogenization, followed by the experimental verification. The results of this paper provide a facile, cost-effective, and scalable way for enhancing the performance of Si-based anodes for LIBs. This strategy can be further extended to the other anode materials suffering from the similar lithiation-induced volume change problem.