Overcoming the Energy vs Power Dilemma in Commercial Li-Ion Batteries via Sparse Channel Engineering

Improvements in both the power and energy density of lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) will enable longer driving distances and shorter charging times for electric vehicles (EVs). The use of thicker and denser electrodes reduces LIB manufacturing costs and increases energy density characteristics at the expense of much slower Li-ion diffusion, higher ionic resistance, reduced charging rate, and lower stability. Contrary to common intuition, we unexpectedly discovered that removing a tiny amount of material (<0.4 vol %) from the commercial electrodes in the form of sparsely patterned conical pores greatly improves LIB rate performance. Our research revealed that upon commercial production of high areal capacity electrodes, a very dense layer forms on the electrode surface, which serves as a bottleneck for Li-ion transport. The formation of sparse conical pore channels overcomes such a limitation, and the facilitated ion transport delivers much higher power without reduction in the practically attainable energy. Diffusion and finite element method-based simulations provide deep insights into the fundamentals of ion transport in such electrode designs and corroborate the experimental findings. The reported insights provide a major thrust to redesigning automotive LIB electrodes to produce cheaper, longer driving range EVs that retain fast charging capability.