Direct Aerosol Printing of Lithium-ion Batteries

Abstract Recently, additive manufacturing (AM) has brought new opportunities to the manufacturing of lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). In this study, aerosol jet printing, as a branch of AM technologies was demonstrated to fabricate lithium-ion batteries for the first time. Printable inks of two pairs of active materials for cathode and anode were developed. The effect of ink composition on the printing characteristics was studied. The developed inks were printed into Li-ion battery electrodes with specific capacities comparable to conventional slurry cast electrodes. Next, to demonstrate fully-printed electrodes, gold and copper inks were printed on top of polymer substrates and thermal/flash sintered as the current collectors for cathode and anode.