Development of a Screen-Printed Flexible Porous Graphite Electrode for Li-Ion Battery

A flexible screen-printed graphite electrode was developed for fabricating lithium-ion battery. A homogenous ink slurry was prepared by mixing graphite as active material along with carbon black (Super-P C45) as conductive additive and polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) as binder in N-Methyl-2- pyrrolidone (NMP) solvent. The ink was deposited via a screen with pattern of 1 mm pores on a flexible copper foil using screen printing process. Lithium-ion battery half-cell was assembled using lithium foil as anode, screen-printed graphite ink on copper substrate as cathode and lithium hexafluorophosphate (LiPF6) as electrolyte. Formation results were tested for the assembled half- cell with controlled porosity and an initial capacity loss (ICL) of 10.7% with 356.2 mAh/g first charge capacity was measured.