Natural cellulose as binder for lithium battery electrodes

This manuscript reports on the development of lithium-ion battery electrodes based on natural cellulose as the binder. In particular, the cellulose binder is dissolved into fully recyclable ionic liquid to make volatile solvent-free slurries, which are coated on typical battery current collectors. Finally, the ionic liquid solvent is removed by a phase inversion process using water as the co-solvent. In such a way, electrodes can be prepared without using polluting volatile organic compounds. Full lithium-ion cells were made using graphite (SLP30) and carbon coated lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO(4), LFP) as active materials and 1 M LiPF(6) in EC-DEC (3:7 wt. ratio) based electrolyte. The lithium ion cells showed a stable specific capacity of 123 mAh per gram of LiFePO(4) at room temperature. This promising result shows that natural cellulose dissolved in a non-volatile ionic liquid can be used to manufacture battery electrodes thus providing new greener opportunities for the lithium-ion battery technology. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.