On the interaction of water-soluble binders and nano silicon particles: alternative binder towards increased cycling stability at elevated temperatures.

Silicon based composites are among the most promising negative electrodes for lithium ion battery applications due to their high theoretical capacities. One major drawback of silicon based anodes are their large volume changes during lithiation and delithiation. Although many efforts have been made in view of new binder materials and improved electrolytes, the resulting battery cell suffers from severe capacity fading at ambient or elevated temperatures, respectively. The strong reactivity with the electrolyte is considered to be responsible for the reduced cycle life at elevated temperatures. In this work we introduce silicon composite anodes with a novel composition based on a gellan gum binder material that show an improved cycling performance at ambient temperature and at 60 °C. To elucidate the influence of the binder material, we investigated the structure of the silicon based composite anodes in order to understand the nature of the interaction of the gellan gum based binder polymers with the silicon particles in comparison with a common CMC binder. Also the influence of the choice of binder on the interactions at the interface between electrode surface and electrolyte were studied. A combination of powerful techniques including solid state NMR, TEM and EELS, XPS as well as FTIR were applied.

(7)Li in situ 1D NMR imaging of a lithium ion battery.

The spatial distribution of charge carriers in lithium ion batteries during current flow is of fundamental interest for a detailed understanding of transport properties and the development of strategies for future improvements of the electrolyte-electrode interface behaviour. In this work we explored the potential of (7)Li 1D in situ NMR imaging for the identification of concentration gradients under constant current load in a battery cell. An electrochemical cell based on PTFE body and a stack of glass microfiber discs that are soaked with a technically relevant electrolyte suitable for high-temperature application and squeezed between a Li metal and a nano-Si-graphite composite electrode was assembled to acquire (7)Li 1D in situ NMR profiles with an improved NMR pulse sequence as function of time and state of charge, thereby visualizing the course of ion concentration during charge and discharge. Surface localized changes of Li concentration were attributed to processes such as solid electrolyte interphase formation or full lithiation of the composite electrode. The method allows the extraction of lithium ion transport properties.