Design and testing of a 64-channel combinatorial electrochemical cell

Design, testing, and performance of a 64-channel combinatorial electrochemical cell are described. This cell is used for high-throughput screening of materials for use as Li-ion rechargeable battery electrodes. Our sealed cell has 64 separate positive electrodes and Li foil for the reference and counter electrodes. This combinatorial electrochemical cell was designed to complement our existing combinatorial materials science infrastructure. Using the combinatorial electrochemical cell decreases the time and labor associated with test cell assembly, improves the repeatability of our assembly procedure, and increases the number of compositions we can test in a given amount of time. In this paper, we demonstrate that the results from the combinatorial electrochemical cell and from conventional 2325 coin-type test cells, containing electrodes of sputtered films prepared in the same sputtering run, are identical for electrodes of the same composition. (C) 2003 The Electrochemical Society.