Cycling Effects on Lithium Vanadium Oxide Phosphate Rechargeable Battery Cathodes
Authors:
- Students:
- Jessica An
- Nathan Bellows
- Ryan Choi
- Trinity Choi
- Tyler Dashaw
- Shiza Dawood
- Crosby des Groseilliers
- Jaden Frese
- Tali Gankin
- Lazar Ilinskiy
- Zachary Johnson
- Anna Koziol
- Peter Krosniak
- Patrick Kuprewicz
- Alexander Lukas
- Lauren Vuong
- Teachers:
- Jeff Rylander
- Mentors:
- Hao Lin (Illinois Institute of Technology, Advanced Photon Source, Sector 10-BM)
- Carlo Segre (Illinois Institute of Technology, Advanced Photon Source, Sector 10-BM)
Advanced Photon Source Sector 10: MRCAT
While the prevalence of reversible energy storage has grown in the past few decades, the need for longer-lasting batteries remains. Current batteries exhibit modest energy density capacities and degrade significantly over many cycles. This research focuses on a LiVOPO4 compound as a battery cathode. Previous experiments have found this compound to exhibit an energy capacity between 250-270 mAh/g. This experiment involved the synthesis of LiVOPO4 through ball milling and annealing (to achieve the desired P2 structure) and the creation of 12 half-cells. After assembling these cathodes into complete batteries in an argon-filled environment, an automatic cycler was used to charge and discharge these cells through a specified number of cycles. Then, removing these cells in their charged and discharged states after various numbers of cycles, these cathodes were extracted and structural changes were investigated using x-ray diffraction in the laboratory and x-ray absorption studies at the Advanced Photon Source (APS).