Multiscale investigation of discharge rate dependence of capacity fade for lithium-ion battery

Commercial 18,650 lithium-ion batteries are cycled at different discharge current rates. It reveals that an accelerated capacity fade occurs for cells at a low discharge rate which is attributed to the loss of lithium inventory (LLI) from the differential voltage analysis (DVA). Cells using high discharge rates exhibit more kinetic loss at the same capacity retention from the analysis of impedance. Characterization techniques, i.e., post-mortem analysis including scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and ex-situ x-ray diffraction (XRD), galvanostatic tests, and in-situ XRD on half-cells made with cathodes and anodes retrieved from the 18,650 batteries, are used to further address the degradation factors. It indicates that the kinetic loss of the high discharge cells can be ascribed to the cathode where more particles are cracked and pulverized. Degradation on the anode is the primary reason for accelerated capacity fade occurring at the low discharge rate. The low discharge current deepens the discharge depth leading the graphite accessing into a higher potential over de-lithiation. Worse interphases and dense agglomerated structure are found from SEM images, which is deemed to result from the anode cycled at a high potential where large volumetric change happens as evidenced by the cycling of new anode half-cells.