Sustainable Solvent-Free Production and Resulting Performance of Polymer Electrolyte-Based All-Solid-State Battery Electrodes

Abstract

For the development of all-solid-state batteries (ASSBs), it is of major importance to identify scalable process routes, to define limits of the processing technologies, and to investigate how the electrochemical performance can be influenced by the manufacturing process. Herein, two scalable and sustainable production chains are presented, extrusion- and direct calendaring of composite cathode granules, which are suitable for industrial series production. Both process routes start with a melt granulation step to desagglomerate the carbon black to homogenize the cathode components. By adjusting the granulation process parameters the process time and, thus, the production costs can be reduced. The polymer solid electrolyte distribution induced by the process shows a considerable influence on the rate capability of the ASSB cells. The manufactured pouch cells reach ≈140 mAh g−1 at 0.1C and 75/50 mAh g−1 at 1C discharge rate and 80 °C for extruded-calendered and directly calendered electrodes, respectively, which is comparable to other recent publications on laboratory scale.