Manufacturing woven carbon fabric electrodes with high areal capacity via high-pressure spray of active lithium-ion particles

Woven carbon fabrics have great potential to work as current collectors of electrodes in Lithium-ion batteries due to their high electric conductivity and complex 3D architecture with large inner areas. To realize this concept of multifunctional materials with both load bearing and electricity storage capabilities, an innovative approach was established to manufacture carbon fabric cathodes using high-pressure spray to coat LiFePO₄ (LFP), acetylene black (AB) and polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) onto carbon fibers. Before coating, the fabrics were desized for optimal conductivity. Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) were adopted to ensure that the process parameters could achieve complete removal of the polymer sizing as well as well dispersion of the LFP particles on both spray surface and inner architecture of the fabrics. The following electrochemical characterization demonstrated that on average, the obtained fabric cathodes could achieve excellent specific capacity of over 110 mAh/g and areal capacity of above 2.7 mAh/cm² with good rate performance. The cathodes also illustrated superb long-cycle performance, with 98% efficiency and 0.97 retention after 100 cycles, indicating that the coating with electrochemical activity could adhere securely to the fiber surface and that the established high-pressure spray approach was capable of producing the multifunctional woven carbon fabric cathodes with stable performance.