Stress-Actuated Spiral Microelectrode for High-Performance Lithium-Ion Microbatteries

Abstract

Miniaturization of batteries lags behind the success of modern electronic devices. Neither the device volume nor the energy density of microbatteries meets the requirement of microscale electronic devices. The main limitation for pushing the energy density of microbatteries arises from the low mass loading of active materials. However, merely pushing the mass loading through increased electrode thickness is accompanied by the long charge transfer pathway and inferior mechanical properties for long-term operation. Here, a new spiral microelectrode upon stress-actuation accomplishes high mass loading but short charge transfer pathways. At a small footprint area of around 1 mm2, a 21-fold increase of the mass loading is achieved while featuring fast charge transfer at the nanoscale. The spiral microelectrode delivers a maximum area capacity of 1053 µAh cm−2 with a retention of 67% over 50 cycles. Moreover, the energy density of the cylinder microbattery using the spiral microelectrode as the anode reaches 12.6 mWh cm−3 at an ultrasmall volume of 3 mm3. In terms of the device volume and energy density, the cylinder microbattery outperforms most of the current microbattery technologies, and hence provides a new strategy to develop high-performance microbatteries that can be integrated with miniaturized electronic devices.