Roll-to-Roll Nanomanufacturing of Hybrid Nanostructures for Energy Storage Device Design

Abstract

A key limitation to the practical incorporation of nanostructured materials into emerging applications is the challenge of achieving low-cost, high throughput, and highly replicable scalable nanomanufacturing techniques to produce functional materials. Here, we report a benchtop roll-to-roll technique that builds upon the use of binary solutions of nanomaterials and liquid electrophoretic assembly to rapidly construct hybrid materials for battery design applications. We demonstrate surfactant-free hybrid mixtures of carbon nanotubes, silicon nanoparticles, MoS2 nanosheets, carbon nanohorns, and graphene nanoplatelets. Roll-to-roll electrophoretic assembly from these solutions enables the controlled fabrication of homogeneous coatings of these nanostructures that maintain chemical and physical properties defined by the synergistic combination of nanomaterials utilized without adverse effects of surfactants or impurities that typically limit liquid nanomanufacturing routes. To demonstrate the utility of this nanomanufacturing approach, we employed roll-to-roll electrophoretic processing to fabricate both positive and negative electrodes for lithium ion batteries in less than 30 s. The optimized full-cell battery, containing active materials of prelithiated silicon nanoparticles and MoS2 nanosheets, was assessed to exhibit energy densities of 167 Wh/kgcell(-1) and power densities of 9.6 kW/kgcell(-1).

Recent Advances in Silicon‐Based Electrodes: From Fundamental Research toward Practical Applications

“…2) Electrode coating parameters: including coating line speed, the pressure, and the gap between each nozzle. [139,140] Increasing the coating line speed is beneficial for industry, but it places strain on the slurry preparation process. Meanwhile, at a certain coating speed, the transverse flow velocity of Si slurry is slower than that of pure graphite slurry.…”

Ultralow Frequency Electrochemical–Mechanical Strain Energy Harvester Using 2D Black Phosphorus Nanosheets

“…Dynamic light scattering (DLS) was also used to characterize the exfoliated materials (Figure S1, Supporting Information) and demonstrates effective exfoliation of nanosheets into NMP. To produce strain harvester electrodes from these 2D building blocks, electrophoretic deposition (EPD) , was used (see the methods, Supporting Information). To produce a bendable and electrically conducting interface for BP nanosheet coatings, graphene was grown on thin copper foils using chemical vapor deposition, which was found to be the best interface for the harvester active material.…”

Polysulfide Anchoring Mechanism Revealed by Atomic Layer Deposition of V2O5 and Sulfur-Filled Carbon Nanotubes for Lithium–Sulfur Batteries

“…Electrophoretic deposition was then used to deposit uniform, interconnected films of CNTs on steel discs (MTI 15.5 mm diameter). Steel discs attached to both counter and working electrodes were immersed into the CNT/NMP solution with a 0.5 cm separation and 100 V of potential for 5 min. , The working electrode was then dried under vacuum for 12 h.…”

“…Steel discs attached to both counter and working electrodes were immersed into the CNT/NMP solution with a 0.5 cm separation and 100 V of potential for 5 min. 33,34 The working electrode was then dried under vacuum for 12 h. Atomic Layer Deposition. Following electrophoretic deposition, CNT materials were directly placed into a Gemstar 6" ALD system.…”

“…To accomplish this, carbon nanotubes were selected since sulfur can be loaded on the tube interior providing a robust charge-transfer pathway between the sulfur and carbon nanotube, while an anchoring layer can be produced on the tube exterior to allow the capture of soluble polysulfides. The cathode was fabricated by utilizing preformed carbon nanotubes assembled with electrophoretic deposition into binder-free electrodes, , processed with highly polar V 2 O 5 exterior surface coatings via ALD, and last interior infiltrated with sulfur (S 8 ) using a gas phase processing route leveraging the thermodynamics of capillary filling. We show that by tuning the ALD coating thickness on the CNT exterior, a trade-off exists between the (adverse) insulating nature of the anchoring layer that limits charge-transfer and the (positive) anchoring effect of soluble polysulfides that is critical to engineer in order to achieve optimized performance.…”