Studies on Electrochemical Performances of CZTS Anode for Lithium-Ion Batteries at Low-Temperature

Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) function as power sources in various environments and the effect of temperature is one of the major factors which limits the performance and proper operations in in cold climates or high altitude areas and in space applications. Hence, the poor charge/discharge rate and short lifetime of LIBs in low-temperature areas have restricted its application for electric vehicle (EV) or a hybrid EV. In this work, copper zinc tin sulfide (CZTS) thin-film anode materials with different mixtures of electrolytes has been prepared to study the electrochemical performance at low-temperature environments. The CZTS anode, prepared from EC/DEC/DMC electrolyte has demonstrated higher efficiency and reversible capacity at -10 o C as compared to the binary electrolyte obtained from EC/DEC electrolyte. The performance of the electrolyte at different temperature ranges and the corresponding electrochemical performance of CZTS electrode is systematically analyzed. The Kinetics and surface morphology of the as-prepared CZTS anode has been analyzed using cyclic voltammetry (CV), electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and Scanning electron microscope (SEM) respectively. As compared to the room temperature capacity, the CZTS has demonstrated outstanding capacity retention around 55.3 % at -10 o C in the ternary solvent electrolyte mixtures after 100 cycles at 500 mA/g current density. However, in the binary EC-DEC based electrode, a rapid capacity degradation with a capacity retention of only around 27.2 % of the room temperature capacity has been observed at the same experimental conditions. This method could be an alternative approach to study the effect of electrolyte and the performance of the anode materials in the design of thin-film micro-batteries for next-generation sub-zero temperature applications. The detail characterization and experimental results with the future perspective of this study will be discussed here.