Water soluble binder for fabrication of Li4Ti5O12 electrodes

Less expensive and greener aqueous electrode preparation processes are essential for the market penetration of lithium ion batteries to mid-scale applications. So far only carboxyl methyl cellulose (CMC) binder has been adopted for industrial use to fabricate carbon electrodes without harmful organic solvents but this process is prone to bacterial growth.
In this study a new binder candidate, Acryl S020, is introduced for an aqueous preparation process that has been used for preparing Li4Ti5O12 electrodes for lithium ion batteries. It is shown that with our water based process electrodes with capacities comparable to those electrodes fabricated with the conventional organic solvent based process with the PVDF binder are obtained. Moreover, our lithium titanate electrodes with the Acryl S020 binder show high capacity retention and they can be operated at sub-zero temperatures. Electrodes were also fabricated with pilot-scale gravure printing and slot-die coating methods and they showed stable cycles lives of 500 cycles.