Electrodes containing only electroactive material processed to relatively large thicknesses (often greater than 500 microns) can have high energy density at the cell level due to the high loading of electroactive material. The specific all electroactive lithium-ion material electrodes in this work undergo a mild thermal treatment and are referred to as sintered electrodes. While in general the great thickness results in long ion diffusion paths which limits rate capability of sintered electrode cells, the lack of inactive additives provides a relative advantage in effective ionic transport properties.

In this talk, recent improvements in sintered electrode batteries will be discussed. In particular, incorporation of new materials with increased gravimetric and more importantly volumetric energy density will be described. In some cases, the alternative materials have lower electronic conductivity than previously used electroactive materials for sintered electrodes, and processing strategies for alleviating electronic conductivity limitations will be discussed. Incorporation of modified materials and processing results in very high energy density small form factor battery cells.