October 21, 2015

Title: Quantitatively measuring and explaining one mechanism for the deterioration of lithium-ion batteries

Speaker: Dr. Jamie Foster, Department of Mathematics, McMaster University

Abstract: In the first part of the talk I will give a general overview of the current state-of-the-art in lithium-ion technology, and a review of the remaining challenges. In particular I will highlight the role of the deterioration of the morphology of the binder matrix in causing the fading of cell performance - it is this aging mechanism that will be the focus of the remainder of the talk. I will then introduce a framework that utilities image acquisition, processing and analysis, and homogenisation techniques, to meaningfully quantify the changes in geometry that occur during operation in real devices. Motivated by the findings of this work, in the final part of the talk, I will present a fluid-/solid-mechanical model for these electrodes that is solved via ad-hoc upscaling of the governing equations. This procedure results in a multiscale problem that links morphological changes on the microscopic scale to deformations on the macroscopic scale. The resulting problems are solved using a combination of asymptotic analysis and finite element methods. The predictions of the model exhibit a good agreement with the FIB/SEM images.