Energy and power densities of novel composite electrode driven by synergy of poly(3,4-ethylene dioxythiophene):poly(styrene sulfonate) and single walled carbon nanotubes for lithium-ion battery

The automobile industries tend to switch to battery driven electric vehicles and hybrid electric vehicles. For these high power applications, it is necessary to reinvestigate the battery engineering and electrode materials. Herein, a novel composite electrode is reported for high power and high energy Li-ion battery which consists of lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO4 or LFP) active material, single walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNT) conductive additive and poly (3,4-ethylene dioxythiophene): poly (styrene sulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS) binder. The present composite electrode having synergistic effect of SWCNT and PEDOT:PSS shows discharge capacity of 166.6 mAh g(-1 )at 0.1C as compared to 131.7 mAh g(-1) and 128 mAh g(-1) of electrodes prepared by either PEDOT:PSS with LFP or SWCNT with LFP using polyvinylidene difluoride (PVDF) conventional binder. Moreover, the novel electrode not only shows capacity retention of 88% after 2500 cycles at 10C but also sustains very high current rate up to 100C. Furthermore, novel composite electrode shows gravimetric energy density of 577 Wh kg(-1) and gravimetric power density of 43 kW kg(-1) on active material basis. These are the highest values of capacity and energy-power densities ever reported to the best of authors knowledge for an electrode prepared by LFP with PEDOT:PSS binder.