New research has come up with a new method of 3D printing battery electrodes that create a microlattice structure with controlled porosity. Additive manufacturing, another way of saying 3D printing, has been used in the past to make these porous electrodes for lithium-ion batteries but because of the manufacturing process their design has been limited.
But thanks to the team of scientists at Carnegie Mellon University and the Missouri University of Science and Technology, there is now a new way to print a microlattice structure that can improve the capacity and charge-discharge rates for lithium-ion batteries.
Associate professor of mechanical engineering at Carnegie Mellon Rahul Panat explained that electrodes with porous architectures can result in higher charge capacities because they allow the lithium to infiltrate the electrode volume, which leads to “very high” electrode utilisation.
“In normal batteries, 30 to 50 per cent of the total electrode volume is unutilized. Our method overcomes this issue by using 3D printing where we create a microlattice electrode architecture that allows the efficient transport of lithium through the entire electrode, which also increases the battery charging rates,” he went on to say.
This comes after researchers at Penn State University developed a different kind of lithium sulphur battery that could be more efficient, less expensive and safer than the ones that we’re using at the moment. The organic sulphur compounds in an interphase layer were used by the team as plasticisers to improve the toughness and flexibility of the interphase layer.
This layer allows the lithium to deposit but without growing dendrites, which can cause short circuiting.
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