Is There a Benefit in Employing Graded Electrodes for Lithium-Ion Batteries?

Literature reports show both benefits and negligible impact when including graded electrodes in battery design, depending upon the exact model and conditions used. In this paper, we use two different optimization approaches for a secondary current distribution porous electrode model with nonlinear kinetics to confirm that computed solutions are correct. We use these confirmed optimal solutions to probe several ways that graded porosity can improve electrode performance. Single objective optimization such as reducing the overall electrode resistance using a graded electrode design provides a modest 4–6% reduction in resistance for typical lithium-ion battery parameters. Multiple objective optimization—for example, simultaneously considering electrode resistance and the overpotential variance and eventually the overpotential average as well—shows that multilayer designs open up a much richer feasible design space for achieving multiple goals. The ultimate answer to the value of graded electrodes will be the techno-economic analysis that links the benefits of an expanded optimal design space to the detrimental costs associated with manufacturing multilayer electrodes. An open-access executable code that can give optimal porosity distribution of any specified chemistry and detailed explanation of the two approaches can be found on the Subramanian group's website.