Abstract
Solvent-free manufacturing of battery components is a promising alternative to traditional slurry processing for reducing the cost and environmental impact. In this work, we used twin-screw melt extrusion to fabricate a polymer-based high voltage composite cathode. The melt-processed cathode is dense (near zero porosity) and thick (65 μm) and has high active material loading (80 wt %). The active particles are distributed uniformly throughout the melt-processed cathode, unlike the traditional slurry-cast cathode, which exhibits inhomogeneous particle distribution. In the melt-processed cathode, polymer and carbon form separate phases, whereas in the slurry-cast cathode they blend into a single phase. Due to these structural differences, the melt-processed cathode shows smooth charge− discharge profiles, while the slurry-cast cathode shows noisy charging and soft-shorting behavior. This work highlights that twin-screw extrusion as a scalable, solvent-free manufacturing method is advantageous in producing uniform cathodes, which mitigates anode instability.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 3188-3195 |
| Number of pages | 8 |
| Journal | ACS Energy Letters |
| DOIs | |
| State | Accepted/In press - 2025 |
Funding
This work was supported by the United States Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Advanced Materials and Manufacturing Technologies Office (AMMTO), awarded under National Laboratory proposal call, DE-LC-0000027: Strengthening domestic Capabilities in Solid-State and Flow Battery Manufacturing. The program is managed by Dr. Changwon Suh at the AMMTO Office. ORNL is managed by UT-Battelle LLC for DOE under Contract DE-AC05-00OR22725. The SEM in this work was performed and supported at the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences in Oak Ridge National Lab, a DOE Office of Science user facility. Use of the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, under contract no. DE-AC02-76SF00515. The microCT was performed at the Stanford Nano Shared Facilities (SNSF) RRID:SCR_023230, supported by the National Science Foundation under award ECCS-2026822. This work was authored in part by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), operated by Alliance for Sustainable Energy, LLC, for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) under Contract No. DE-AC36-08GO28308. TZW would like to acknowledge the support from the Fast and Cooperative Ion Transport in Polymer-Based Materials (FaCT), an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725.