Multiscale Ion-Electron Transport in 3D-Printed Hierarchically Porous Full Batteries

Abstract

The rapid advancement of next-generation energy storage technologies demands advanced manufacturing strategies that offer structural precision, scalability, and compositional tunability. Three-dimensional (3D) printing has emerged as a transformative approach to constructing energy storage architectures. In this work, we report a 3D-printed LiCoO2//Li4Ti5O12 full battery featuring a hierarchically porous and conductive reduced graphene oxide-carbon nanotubes (rGO-CNTs) framework that enables desirable ion-electron transport. The resulting full cells exhibit a high capacity of 151.4 mAh g−1 at the rate of 0.1 C, superior rate performance, and outstanding cycling stability, maintaining 97.1% capacity after 3000 cycles. Furthermore, the fully printed cell successfully powers a digital stopwatch, demonstrating its practical applicability for devices. This study presents a structural and compositional study for constructing high-performance customizable 3D-printed batteries, advancing the digital manufacturing of next-generation energy systems.