Professor Nam Inho, School of Department of Chemical Engineering and Material Sciences secures stability and improves charging speed
Published in the Advanced Energy Materials, and expected to develop secondary batteries and commercially utilize them
Researchers from the School of Chemical Engineering and Material Sciences at Chung-Ang University (CAU, President Park Sang-gue) succeeded in developing a technology that uses potato starch to increase the stability of silicon anodes used in high-performance lithium-ion batteries and significantly reduce the charging time.
A research team led by Professor Nam Inho of the School of Chemical Engineering and Material Sciences (also a faculty member at the Department of Advanced Materials Engineering and the Department of Intelligent Energy and Industry) recently developed a binder technology for silicon anodes with excellent mechanical performance using potato starch, which has shear-thickening properties that respond to stress in real time.
Schematic Diagram of Potato Starch Binder for Real-Time Stress Adaptation - Performance Evaluation
When making high-capacity batteries, a binder is required to act as an adhesive. Among the many previously developed binders, silicone has received considerable attention because it has the largest capacity. However, due to its weakness in a dynamic volume expansion environment, it was considered difficult to secure stability during long-term operation.
The real-time stress-responsive binder developed by Professor Nam's research team distributes stress and optimizes the binder structure in real time according to the degree of volumetric expansion of the silicon. It not only enables stable operation for a long time, it makes implementation of a silicon anode-based secondary battery with high energy density possible by maximizing the amount of silicon anode that can store lithium in a limited volume.
The developed binder was confirmed to offer the advantage of increasing high-speed battery charging efficiency. Previously used silicon anodes had limitations in high-speed charging due to structural instability, but the structural specificity of the potato starch binder improved ionic conductivity, resulting in a significant increase in charging speed.
The details of the research can be confirmed in the paper “Intelligent Stress-Adaptive Binder Enabled by Shear-Thickening Property for Silicon Electrodes of Lithium-Ion Batteries,” published jointly by the CAU research team consisting of Professor Nam and doctoral student Kwon Ohyun, along with Professor Park Soomin’s team at the Korea University of Technology & Education, and Professor Lee Hyunwook of the Ulsan National Institute of Science & Technology (UNIST). The paper was published in “Advanced Energy Materials,” a world-renowned academic journal in the field of energy materials, with an impact factor (IF) of 27.8.
Professor Nam said, “The newly developed binder can maintain stable performance over a long period of time in response to silicon electrodes that expand in real time. As the chronic problem has been resolved, it will greatly help in the development commercially usable silicon anode-based secondary batteries with high energy density.”