"Continuous Manufacturing of Graphite Anodes with Columnar Alignment Using Magnetic Field and Freeze Casting" 

Luke Hentz, MSE PhD Candidate 

Advisor(s): Dr. Mukerrem Cakmak and Dr. Rahim Rahimi

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ABSTRACT

Battery electric vehicles are a prominent technology for reducing carbon emissions and promoting sustainability, but in terms of performance, they fall short to internal combustion engine vehicles due to their long charging times. Higher charging rates for the batteries are capped by lithium plating on the graphite anodes, which can lead to capacity loss and the lithium dendrite growth that can cause battery combustion. A Z-aligned porous structure for the graphite anode can mitigate lithium plating. Two methods to form this structure that could be easily incorporated into the battery manufacturing industry are magnetic field alignment and freeze casting. Magnetic field alignment utilizes the attraction of the magnetic dipole within the particles to create “pearl-chains” that form the porous structure. Freeze casting utilizes the directional growth of ice crystals to move the particles, and the removal of the ice leaves the porous structure. Within this proposed research report, the fundamentals and variables of each of these techniques are examined. Several research works have demonstrated the use of magnetic field alignment and/or freeze casting for the manufacturing of Z-aligned porous graphite anodes. Although the success from these works is significant, there are still oversights and gaps in the fields, with the greatest of these being that the techniques have not been utilized in a continuous process, which is necessary for implementation in industry-scale manufacturing.