Unique Porous Structures for Electrochemical Devices

Most of nano-stmctured materials are based on nano-sized particles of active materials. For htliium batteries, for example, a good electroruc conductor (e g., carbon) and binders are uniformly blended with nano-sized particles of active electrode materials to enhance the electronic conductivity and binding strength among the particles, respectively. 

Schematically shown in Fig. 1(a) is a simplified porous strac-ture comprised of nano-particles. The electrode structure includes space to somewhat accommodate the volume change induced by 

However, the high performance of this porous electrode may be unsustainable because of the inherent instability of the strac-ture. As soon as the active species around the nano-particles start to be exhausted, the overaU electrode process is possibly hmited by the transport of active species fiom the outside into the porous stmcture. Analogous to ion transport through a porous separator, the iR loss AEjR across the porous electrode can be expressed as follows  

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