The effect of sulfonated copolymer as a binder on the electrochemical performance of LiFePO4 cathode for lithium-ion batteries

In today's market, lithium-ion batteries are proving to be the most promising and effective rechargeable batteries. In the development of active materials with high energy density for batteries, the design of binders is a bottleneck technology, which produces an interconnected electrode structure. In this study, for developing lithium-ion batteries with high efficiency, the sulfonated copolymer was employed as an effective binder. In order to improve the performance of poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) as a binder for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), sulfonated PVDF copolymer was prepared in this study using the atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP) process. The influence of sulfonated PVDF binder on the electrochemical performances of LIBs was assessed using charge and discharge measurements, cycling performance up to 300 cycles, cycling voltammetry (CV), and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) analysis. The investigation indicated decreased concentration polarization and improved lithiation and delithiation kinetics at high number of charge/discharge cycles for LiFePO4 electrodes with sulfonated PVDF binders. The discharge capacity after 300 cycles was 90 mAh g−1 with a capacity retention of 100% at 1C. As a result, the copolymer synthesized in this paper can be utilized to design next-generation polymer binders for high-efficiency LIBs.