Study on the growth parameters of CNTs for lithium ion battery application

• Main Author: Gao, Li
• Other Authors: Tay Beng Kang
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2014
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Electrical and electronic engineering::Microelectronics
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/60801
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Lithium ion batteries (LIBs) have been commonly used in many mobile electronics and also indentified as power solution for electrical vehicles as rechargeable batteries. There are advantages that make LIBs competitive and popular. However, as power consuming of mobile electronics keeps increasing, it is necessary to raise the energy density of batteries to ensure the power sufficiency. The capacity of LIBs is limited by their anode materials which are conventionally graphite (Capacity of 372mAh/g). Many research studies have been carried out to design novel types of electrode materials. However, challenges exist as these emerging materials appear to perform unsatisfying in cycling performance test. In order to overcome this problem, compositing material was necessary to be applied in order to improve the physical structural strength and electrical conductivity. Carbon nanotube has been widely considered as a suitable compositing material because of its excellent physical and electrical properties. These properties are affected by growth conditions of CNT, so it is important to study CNT growth parameters. The objective of this final year project is to study the growth parameters of CNTs and also the dependence of the CNTs’ properties on the growth parameters. Furthermore, a demonstration of CNTs’ application in LIBs is also made by combining CNTs with a typical type of alternative material (MoS2) into a composite anode material. Various growth parameters including growth temperatures, growth durations, and hydrogen flow rates of CNT were studied and analyzed. After MoS2/CNT composite was assembled as anodes for LIBs, cycling performance was evaluated. Significant enhancement in the capacity and also improvement in the cycling performance was demonstrated by the LIB obtained. From the experiment result, it is evident CNTs can be a promising compositing material in anodes of LIBs, as CNT can help to strengthen the mechanical structure of alternative materials and also improve electrical conductivity.