Browsing by Author "Hawksley, James Brendan"

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    Investigating the effectiveness of carbon nanotubes for low inactive component ni-rich cathodes for lithium-ion batteries
    (University of the Western Cape, 2024) Hawksley, James Brendan
    As society drives towards a greener economy, the requirement for technologies to support this transition is of the utmost importance. The Lithium-ion battery is already a well-established technology, being utilised in a wide range of industries. Nonetheless, from the perspective of the automotive industry, the current generation of batteries are still lacking in key characteristics, such as volumetric capacity and power performance. The use of high aspect ratio conductive additive materials, such as carbon nanotubes, have been proposed as a means to improve the overall performance of the cell. However, to the author’s best knowledge, no work has been done to assess the effect of these high aspect ratio materials on the behaviour of the electrode slurry, and by extension probing the optimization of the electrode slurry preparation process. The aim of this work is therefore to investigate the effect of using a binary conductive additive system – combining spherical carbon black conductive additive, and high aspect ratio carbon nanotubes – on the electrode slurry. Furthermore, extensive time is taken to correlate the behaviour of the slurry with the characteristics of the coated electrode sheet, comparing the rheology of the slurry, with the microstructure of the electrode, as well as its electronic conductivity performance. During the course of the work, the effect of the sequence of addition during the mixing stage, as well as the effect of the carbon nanotube concentration on the slurry, electrode microstructure and electronic conductivity is investigated.