Carbon Fibres for Multifunctional Lithium-Ion Batteries

Sammanfattning: The transportation industry today faces many challenges because of the rapid movement towards electrification. One major challenge is the weight of the battery, which limits the effectiveness of the vehicles. One of the possible routes to reduce the weight on a system-level is introducing structural batteries, batteries that simultaneously storeenergy and hold a mechanical load. Placing these batteries in a load-bearing part of the structure reduces weight and increases effectiveness on a system level. Carbon fibres are especially suited for structural batteries because of the high performance as reinforcement material in a polymer composite, as well as the ability to insert lithium to function as negative electrodes in batteries.Another field that has attracted attention the latest years is flexible batteries due to the emerging of flexible displays and wearable electronics. Carbon fibres can be a suitable material in flexible batteries due to the good conductivity, mechanical integrity and ability to forman integrated flexible film with cellulose nanofibrils (CNF) as binder.This thesis focuses on the usage of carbon fibres in structural and flexible batteries. Lignin based and commercial carbon fibres are evaluated as negative electrodes using a combination of electrochemical methods, material characterization and mechanical testing. Further, the diffusion is characterized using nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, revealing an inequality of axial and radial diffusion in carbon fibres. The carbon fibres with a largely disordered structure show most promise as a negative electrode, with a capacity similar to graphite and having a high coulombic efficiency.Carbon fibres used as current collectors are evaluated as well, both continuous LiFePO4 coated carbon fibres with electrophoretic deposition for structural positive electrode applications and chopped carbonfibres bounded by CNF as a layer in a flexible electrode. The LiFePO4 coated carbon fibres show promise as a structural electrode with moderatecapacity, high coulombic efficiency, good rate performance and good adhesion between fibres and coating. The flexible electrodes with carbon fibres as current collectors perform well with a high capacity, good rate performance, low weight and high flexibility. The electrodes withstand bending for 4000 times without any performance degradation.