Interest in the development of flexible free-standing electrodes for wearable batteries is on the rise ^1-3. Carbon nanotube (CNT) and graphene films have severally been evaluated to serve as active materials for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). However, CNTs and graphene nano-sized carbon materials are made into a sheet as free standing electrodes through vacuum filtration of a solution of the nano-sized particles. This is a limitation to the mechanical deformation strength of the dispersed particles and thus limits possible applications of the flexible CNT/graphene electrodes. In the present work, un-doped, untreated, flexible freestanding mesh-like carbon cloth (C-Felt) was examined as a potential anode to replace the commonly used powdered graphite composite anodes (GRA) in a full cell Li-ion battery. We compared the discharged capacity performances of LiFePO₄/GRA versus LiFePO₄/C-Felt full cells of different cathode to anode ratios. Our results show that C-Felt anode presents itself as a potential cost effective, ready to use, lightweight, free-standing and flexible anode material that can be used in a practical full cell.

References

1. Janicek, A., Gao, N., Fan, Y., Liu, H., 2015 “High Performance Activated Carbon/Carbon Cloth Cathodes for Microbial Fuel Cells,”, Fuel Cells, 15( 6), pp. 855–861.
2. Hu, L. B., Wu, H., Mantia F. L., Yang, Y., Cui, Y., 2010, “Thin, flexible secondary Li-ion paper batteries,” ACS Nano., 4, pp. 5843-5451.
3. Liu, B., Zhang, J., Wang, X., Chen, G., Chen, D., Zhou, C., Shen, G., 2012, “Hierarchical Three-Dimensional ZnCo₂O₄ Nanowire Arrays/Carbon Cloth Anodes for a Novel Class of High-Performance Flexible Lithium-Ion Batteries,” Nano Lett., 12, pp. 3005-3011