Effect of coating operating parameters on electrode physical characteristics and final electrochemical performance of lithium-ion batteries

The effect of coating parameters of NMC622 cathodes and graphite anodes on their physical structure and half-cell electrochemical performance is evaluated by design of experiments. Coating parameters include the coater comma bar gap, coating ratio and web speed. The electrochemical properties studied are gravimetric and volumetric capacity, rate performance, areal specific impedance (ASI) and C-rate. Differences in the manufacturing effects on the electrode physical structure and electrochemical performance are observed between the electrodes and are modelled by linear regression. The effect of cell coating weight and porosity on half-coin cell electrochemical performance is also evaluated by linear regression. The cathode performance at high gravimetric and volumetric C-rates is mainly influenced by coating weight, whereas porosity is the only explanatory variable for volumetric C-rates of 1C and below. For anode, correlations are only found for the C/20 and 5C gravimetric and volumetric capacities and are related to coating weight. An inverse relationship between ASI and coating weight is observed for cathode, but in general the cell physical characteristics cannot completely explain the observed ASI for both electrodes. The obtained models are useful for the design and robust manufacturing of electrodes since present a quantitative relationship between the coating parameters, cell characteristics and final cell electrochemical performance.