Mechanical Engineering Commons^™

High-Throughput Mechanical Characterization Methods For Composite Electrodes And In-Situ Analysis Of Li-Ion Batteries, Luize Scalco De Vasconcelos

Open Access Theses

Electrodes in commercial rechargeable batteries are microscopically heterogeneous materials. The constituents often have large variation in their mechanical properties, making the characterization process a challenging task. In addition, the mechanical properties and mechanical behaviors of electrodes are closely coupled with the electrochemical processes of lithium insertion and extraction. There is an urgent need to develop an experimental platform to characterize the chemomechanical response of electrodes under the in-situ conditions of charge and discharge.

In the first part of this thesis, instrumented grid indentation is employed to determine the elastic modulus and hardness of the constituent phases of a composite cathode. …