PaA – Partnership Area

Project

PaA-2

Modeling Battery Electrodes with Mechanical Interactions and Multiple Phase Transitions upon Ion Insertion

Project Heads

Manuel Landstorfer, Matthias Liero

Project Members

Tom Dörffel

Project Duration

01.01.2024 − 31.12.2025

Located at

WIAS

Description

Lithium-Ion-Batteries (LIBs), and also future successors like Sodium-based batteries, are composed of porous intercalation electrodes that can store Li (or Na) within their crystallographic structure. This intercalation process is driven by electrochemical reactions, Li+ + e- ⇔ Li, where the electro-neutral reaction product Li is stored in the host electrode, for instance graphite as anode material. Two phenomena can occur within host materials upon intercalation:

  1. volume changes and subsequent mechanical stresses, and
  2. phase separation into homogeneous segments within or among electrode particles.

Both effects impact the cell voltage, which is inherently a function of the amount of Li stored in active material, i.e., the status of charge y ∈ (0,1). Accounting for these effects in a model framework for a porous intercalation electrodes is crucial for our understanding of functionality, safety, and lifetime of battery cells.

The aim of this project is to derive PDE-based models for battery electrodes, which are subject to mechanical deformation as well as phase separation upon ion intercalation.

 

Three main aspects are considered:

  1. the electro-chemo-mechanical modeling of a non-phase separating single particle,
  2. the modeling of an N-phase single particle,
  3. the homogenization of porous electrodes with combined mechanical interactions and phase separation.

Accompanying numerical simulations will be carried out to investigate the behavior of the derived models in comparison to real electrode materials.

Related Publications

  1. Martin Heida, Manuel Landstorfer, and Matthias Liero. Homogenization of a porous intercalation electrode with phase separation. to appear in SIAM Multiscale Modeling \& Simulation, Weierstrass Institute Berlin Preprint 2905, 2021. doi:10.20347/WIAS.PREPRINT.2905
  2. Willem J. M. van Oosterhout and Matthias Liero. Finite-strain poro-visco-elasticity with degenerate mobility. ZAMM – Journal of Applied Mathematics and Mechanics / Zeitschrift für Angewandte Mathematik und Mechanik, 104(5):e202300486, 2024. doi:10.1002/zamm.202300486.

Related Picture

Charging behavior of a lithium-ion battery cell.