Carbon Nanotube Enhanced Lithium Ion Composite Cathodes

Tennyson, Wesley

Carbon Nanotube Enhanced Lithium Ion Composite Cathodes

dc.contributor.advisor	Resasco, Daniel
dc.contributor.author	Tennyson, Wesley
dc.contributor.committeeMember	Glatzhofer, Daniel
dc.contributor.committeeMember	Harwell, Jeffery
dc.contributor.committeeMember	Jentoft, Rolf
dc.contributor.committeeMember	Saha, Mrinal
dc.date.accessioned	2014-08-14T14:57:00Z
dc.date.available	2014-08-14T14:57:00Z
dc.date.issued	2014-08-13
dc.date.manuscript	2014-07-23
dc.description.abstract	Batteries are sought that can deliver high energy density and high power density over thousands of cycles, with minimum environmental impact and cost. Invariably no one material can achieve all of these requirements. Lithium Iron Phosphate (LFP) satisfies most of these requirements reasonably well with the exception of power density. Two coincident methods have been utilized to increase the power capability and cycle life of battery cathodes by reducing the electrode resistance to the reaction site and increasing the diffusion coefficient for ions and electrons. Electrode resistance is typically reduced by a combination of surface coatings and carbon additives in the composites. Recent work has demonstrated that spray deposition with PVdF as binder increases the cathode capacity resilience over extended cycling.1 Likewise, incorporation of carbon nanotubes (CNT) has demonstrated decreased cathode fade over many life cycles as well.2-3 Since capacity fade has been experimentally connected to loss of electrode contact, it stands to reason that a battery made with a process that optimizes the binder contact and utilizes a resilient and highly conductive carbon additive would have extended capacity life, with the potential added benefit of higher energy density from a small inactive material content in the cathode.4 In this work, we investigate the properties of the CNT, the processing of CNTs in cathode films made using slurry and spray deposition techniques with LiFePO4 as the cathode material, and the synthesis of the materials with CNTs. We demonstrate that with an optimized processing method composites with minimal inactive material (10%) can perform with rate capabilities comparable to 20% carbon black (25% inactive material) without capacity fade.	en_US
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/11244/10499
dc.language	en_US	en_US
dc.subject	Engineering, Materials Science.	en_US
dc.subject	Engineering, Electronics and Electrical.	en_US
dc.subject	Engineering, Chemical.	en_US
dc.subject	Batteries	en_US
dc.subject	Carbon Nanotubes	en_US
dc.thesis.degree	Ph.D.	en_US
dc.title	Carbon Nanotube Enhanced Lithium Ion Composite Cathodes	en_US
ou.group	College of Engineering	en_US