BUILDING AND CHARACTERIZATION OF SYMMETRIC STRUCTURAL BATTERY

Paper in proceeding, 2022

Recently, a structural battery with multifunctional carbon fibre anode has been reported. The energy density of active material is not fully extracted due to the low ionic conductivity inside the battery. To identify the main region that attributes to the low ion transportation, we assemble a symmetric structural battery with one anode layer in the centre sandwiched between two cathode layers. Such a design can also be treated as a combination of two asymmetric batteries with one full thickness cathode layer plus one half thickness anode layer. Thus, the travelled distance of lithium ions is shortened only in the anode part. It is found that the area energy density of the symmetric structural battery is doubled compared to a reference asymmetric battery. Thus, the additional cathode layer activates the double amount of carbon fibres in the anode. A plausible reason is that only the carbon fibres next to the separator is activated in the battery.