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The interfacial debonding between the active layer and the current collector has been recognized as a critical mechanism for battery fading, and thus has attracted great efforts focused on the related analyses. However, much still remains to be studied regarding practical methods for suppressing electrode debonding, especially from the perspective of mechanics. In this paper, a pre-strain strategy of current collectors to alleviate electrode debonding is proposed. An analytical model for a symmetric electrode with a deformable and limited-thickness current collector is developed to analyze the debonding behavior involving both a pre-strain of the current collector and an eigen-strain of the active layers. The results reveal that the well-designed pre-strain can significantly delay the debonding onset (by up to 100%) and considerably reduce the debonding size. The critical values of the pre-strain are identified, and the pre-strain design principles are also provided. Based on these findings, this work sheds light on the mechanical design to suppress electrode degradation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the complex mesostructure and components of composite active layers in lithium-ion battery (LIB) electrodes, coupled with the concentration-dependent material properties and eigenstrains, efficiently estimating the effective modulus of the active layers remains a great challenge. In this work, the classic Mori–Tanaka method is found to be unable to estimate the modulus of the active layer. By realizing the importance of the mesostructure feature, a rod-rod model is proposed. The resulting modulus is expressed analytically. It is shown that the rod-rod model can accurately estimate the modulus evolution of the active layer if the material properties of the components and the evolution of volume fractions are known in advance. Moreover, a simplified rod-rod model is also developed to reduce the complexity of the proposed method. By knowing the volume fractions at two arbitrary states of charge and subsequently determining two constants, the simplified model can estimate the modulus efficiently. Considering both its accuracy and its simplicity, the simplified rod-rod model is the most suitable for the estimation. Thus, the methods developed in this work provide a new perspective for analyzing the material properties of composite active layers in LIB electrodes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, a system of automatic microparticle patterning that could enable the separation, trapping, and translation of single microbeads in liquid suspension using negative dielectrophoresis (DEP) tweezers was presented to form a single-bead pattern. A microchip with integrated electrodes was flipped and placed above the substrate through a micromanipulator. Microparticles laying on the substrate could be displaced to different positions relative to the electrodes on the microchip, and only the selected particles would be trapped by the electric fields generated from electrodes. Vision-based approaches were used to evaluate the necessary information, such as the gap distance and the positions of electrodes and microparticles in the image. A strategy for separating nearby particles was proposed to achieve single-bead patterning with high accuracy. A controller was used to guide the microparticles toward the position for trapping while avoiding flow disturbance. Different strategies were simulated to decrease the patterning time and find the minimum traveling distance and the best route of movement. The optimization problem is NP-hard. Hence, global optimization algorithms, such as genetic algorithm, particle swarm optimization, and ant colony optimization (ACO), were simulated, and the results were compared with those of the local optimization method. The comparison results showed that ACO obtained the best performance among the methods. The strategy for constructing high-quality microparticle patterns was also examined through experiments. Orange fluorescent polystyrene beads suspended in 6-aminohexanoic acid solution were considered and successfully patterned on a glass substrate by using the proposed system. Note to Practitioners—Micropatterning is an effective tool for pharmaceutical research and drug discovery. However, the reliability of results depends on the quality of patterns. Existing approaches, such as microfluidic devices, are limited to create a pattern from one chip for single use, and the entire process is sealed and isolated from the environment. In this study, a multielectrode microchip combined with a vision-based micromanipulator is introduced to create a novel noncontact approach for microparticle patterning, which offers high flexibility and guarantees the quality of the constructed patterns. The electrodes on the chip can be selectively energized to determine the shape of the final pattern. A real-time screening is performed so that the micromanipulator will only guide the particles in good condition for selection. An optimization algorithm is implemented to aid the particle selection with the electrodes, allowing high-quality microparticle patterns to be constructed in a short time for various applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prelithiation has been intensively investigated in high-capacity lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). However, the optimization of prelithiation degrees for long service life of LIBs still remains a challenge. The positive efffect of prelithiation on suppressing degradation of LIBs, besides directly pursuing the high first Coulomb efficiency which has been widely reported in the literature, is revealed and discussed based on an analytical model focusing on the interfacial delamination in electrodes. For full charge-discharge cycling, well-designed prelithiation can effectively suppress the delamination and reduce the debonding size by approximately 25%, compared with the case without prelithiation. For the strategy combining partial charge-discharge cycling and prelithiation, the largest reversible capacity without debonding can be significantly improved by approximately 100% with well-designed prelithiation. This work is expected to provide a prelithiation design principle and further improve the mechanical stability of LIB electrodes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• An analytical model was established to characterize the mode-II energy release rate. • A novel plasticity-assisted zero-degree peeling test was proposed to obtain a stable crack propagation stage. • The effect of dimensionless stress, indices of hardening, and load transfer length on energy release rate were analyzed. • An excellent agreement between the theoretical calculation and numerical result was demonstrated. Lithium-ion batteries integrate heterogeneous materials such as active layers and current collectors, resulting in interfaces prone to delamination during the charge/discharge process. The mode-II energy release rate is a key index to evaluate the interfacial adhesion properties and structural integrity of electrodes. In this study, an analytical model considering the energy balance principle and a nonlinear constitutive model was established to characterize the mode-II energy release rate. A novel plasticity-assisted zero-degree peeling test (PAZDPT) is proposed to obtain a stable crack propagation stage where the peeling force is determined to calculate the mode-II energy release rate. Several parameter studies were conducted to verify the approximation of the stress distributions and simplification of the analytical model. The accuracy of the analytical model was validated against finite-element calculations. The results demonstrated an excellent agreement between the theoretical calculation and numerical results. Moreover, PAZDPT is conducive to steady crack propagation because it restricts the energy accumulation around the crack tip. The analytical model and newly proposed PAZDPT can also be extended to determine the mode-II energy release rate of other types of interfaces in bilayer thin-film materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]