Hydrogel-based Additive Manufacturing of Lithium Cobalt Oxide

Area of Science:

• Materials Science
• Electrochemistry
• Additive Manufacturing

Background:

• Advanced energy storage devices, especially lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), require novel electrode architectures.
• Current 3D printing methods for multicomponent metal oxides face limitations in resolution and material composition due to particle-based or binder systems.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce a facile and versatile 3D printing approach for fabricating complex multicomponent metal oxide architectures.
• To demonstrate the fabrication of binder- and additive-free lithium cobalt oxide (LCO) cathodes for LIBs.

Main Methods:

• Utilized aqueous metal salt solutions as precursors for 3D printing.
• Employed digital light processing printing to create lithium and cobalt ion-containing hydrogels.
• Calcined hydrogels to form micro-porous, self-similar LCO architectures (~100μm resolution).

Main Results:

• Successfully fabricated free-standing, 3D architected LCO structures.
• Integrated these LCO structures as LIB cathodes, demonstrating electrochemical capacity retention of 76% over 100 cycles at C/10.
• Achieved high resolution and complex form factors without binders or conductive additives.

Conclusions:

• The aqueous metal salt precursor approach overcomes limitations of existing 3D printing methods for metal oxides.
• This versatile method enables the fabrication of various multicomponent metal oxides with intricate 3D architectures for energy storage applications.
• The developed technique offers a promising pathway for next-generation LIB electrodes with enhanced performance and form factor control.