3D-printing of easily recyclable all-ceramic thick LiCoO2 electrodes with enhanced areal capacity for Li-ion batteries using a highly filled thermoplastic filament

In this work, the production of thick ceramic LiCoO2 (LCO) electrodes using a conventional desktop 3D-printing was developed as an alternative to conventional electrode manufacturing for Li-ion batteries. Firstly, the filament formulation, based on LCO powders and a sacrificial polymers blend, is optimized to achieve suitable features (viscosity, flexibility and mechanical consistency) to be used in the 3-D printing. Printing parameters were optimized to produce defect-free bodies with coin geometry (12 mm diameter and 230–850 µm thickness). Thermal debinding and sintering were studied in order to obtain all ceramic LCO electrodes with adequate porosity. The additive-free sintered electrodes (850 µm thickness) have enhanced areal and volumetric capacities (up to 28 mA·h·cm−2 and 354 mA·h·cm−3) due to their extremely high mass loading (up to 285 mg·cm−2). Thus, the Li//LCO half-cell delivered an energy density of 1310 W·h·L-1. The ceramic nature of the electrode permits the use of a thin film of paint gold as current collector, reducing considerably the polarization of thick electrodes. Thus, the whole manufacturing process developed in this work is a complete solvent-free method to produce tuneable shape electrodes with enhanced energy density, opening the door for the manufacturing of high-density batteries with complex geometries and good recyclable.

3D-printing of easily recyclable all-ceramic thick LiCoO2 electrodes with enhanced areal capacity for Li-ion batteries using a highly filled thermoplastic filament Articles