국립 부경대학교

Development of anode electrode for high-performance lithium metal solid-state battery using a carbon nanofiber collector

Professor Oh Pil-Gun

Prof. Oh Pil-Gun (Dept. of Nanotechnology Engineering) of Pukyong National University is gaining academic recognition by presenting 'carbon nanofiber' as a cathode material for next-generation future batteries.

Pukyong National University announced that a study on the improvement of the battery negative electrode to increase the energy density of sulfide-based all-solid-state batteries, jointly conducted by Professor Oh and Professor Jo Jae-Pil from UNIST, was published in <Angewandte Chemie International Edition>(IF:15.336), a well-known international academic journal in chemistry of the German company 'Wiley'.

Professor Oh's research team investigated the related research on cathode electrodes of sulfide-based solid-state batteries so far through the paper 'Development of high energy anodes for all-solid-state lithium batteries based on sulfide electrolytes' published in this journal, and they analyzed the limitations and improvements of the study and suggested the future research direction for the cathode electrode.

Currently, the most widely used secondary battery is a lithium-ion battery, but due to a liquid electrolyte having volatility, thermal stability is insufficient, and studies are being conducted to overcome this problem. A solid-state battery that replaces the electrolyte with a sulfide-based solid electrolyte is emerging as an alternative, but it has a limitation in that it has a lower energy density in the electrode unit than that of a lithium-ion battery.

Accordingly, the research team reported that it is necessary to improve the energy density in the electrode unit rather than the system unit for the commercialization of the solid-state battery and presented the 'anode collector using carbon nanofibers' as the anode electrode of the solid-state battery.

Carbon nanofiber is used as a negative electrode and has excellent electrical conductivity, so it can replace the current copper collector, thereby improving battery energy density. At the same time, when lithium metal is oxidized and reduced due to sufficient voids, it can alleviate the change in the volume of the electrode, effectively solving the problem of the change in the volume of the electrode during the charging and discharging process that most lithium metal battery anode technologies currently have. Professor Oh's research team is researching materials as well as electrode fabrication and design technology for the adoption of electrodes of this material.

Professor Oh Pil-Gun's research team conducted this research with the support of the 'Basic Research Laboratory' project selected by the National Research Foundation of Korea in 2020 and has been conducting various research such as electrode design and electrode material development for the commercialization of all-solid-state batteries.