Towards a lithium-ion fiber battery

Abstract

One of the key objectives in the realm of flexible electronics and flexible power sources is to achieve large-area, low-cost, scalable production of flexible systems. In this thesis we propose a new Li-ion battery architecture in a fiber form that could be the building block to large-area, conformal, flexible power sources, achieved through fiber thermal drawing. This architecture is based on the key-finding of using thermally induced phase separation as a method to introduce porous structures inside thermally drawn fibers for the very first time. This new versatile process allows us to incorporate ionically conductive gel-polymer electrolytes in fiber cores in a very simple way, with ionic conductivities suitable for a battery application. The rest of our proposed infiber battery architecture is composed of composite electrodes, which we fabricate and characterize. A model system is tested and a detailed pathway towards the first successful fabrication of a Li-ion fiber battery is given.