The electrode tortuosity factor: why the conventional tortuosity factor is not well suited for quantifying transport in porous Li-ion battery electrodes and what to use instead
File(s)
Published version
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
The tortuosity factor of porous battery electrodes is an important parameter used to correlate electrode microstructure with performance through numerical modeling. Therefore, having an appropriate method for the accurate determination of tortuosity factors is critical. This paper presents a numerical approach, based on simulations performed on microstructural image data, which enables a comparison between two common experimental methods. Several key issues with the conventional “flow through” type tortuosity factor are highlighted, when used to characterise electrodes. As a result, a new concept called the “electrode tortuosity factor” is introduced, which captures the transport processes relevant to porous electrodes better than the “flow through” type tortuosity factor. The simulation results from this work demonstrate the importance of non-percolating (“dead-end”) pores in the performance of real electrodes. This is an important result for optimizing electrode design that should be considered by electrochemical modelers. This simulation tool is provided as an open-source MATLAB application and is freely available online as part of the TauFactor platform.
Date Issued
2020-08-14
Date Acceptance
2020-07-17
Citation
npj Computational Materials, 2020, 6
ISSN
2057-3960
Publisher
Nature Research
Journal / Book Title
npj Computational Materials
Volume
6
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2020. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing,
adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give
appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative
Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party
material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless
indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the
article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory
regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly
from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.
org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing,
adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give
appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative
Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party
material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless
indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the
article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory
regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly
from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.
org/licenses/by/4.0/.
License URL
Sponsor
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
Engineering & Physical Science Research Council (E
Identifier
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41524-020-00386-4
Grant Number
FITG018-B
Subjects
Science & Technology
Physical Sciences
Technology
Chemistry, Physical
Materials Science, Multidisciplinary
Chemistry
Materials Science
X-RAY TOMOGRAPHY
ELECTROCHEMICAL IMPEDANCE
DIFFUSION
SPECTROSCOPY
CHALLENGES
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
123
Date Publish Online
2020-08-14