Sodium Alginate: A Water-Processable Binder in High-Voltage Cathode Formulations

Binders are electrochemically inactive electrode components. However, their chemical and physical nature greatly affects battery performance and plays a key role in electrode integrity and interface reactivity. The binders thus have a strong impact on battery capacity retention and cycle life.Water-processable binders wouldmake the electrode preparation process cheap and environmentally friendly and provide a viable alternative to polyvinylidene difluoride (PVdF). Here we report the use of sodium alginate (SA) as binder for LiNi0.5Mn1.5O4 (LNMO), one of the most promising cathode materials for high-voltage and high-energy LIBs. We demonstrate that electrodes with high mass loading containing SA have excellent specific discharge capacity (120 mAh g-1 at C/3 and 100 mAh g-1 at 5C) with negligible overpotentials in conventional electrolyte based on ethylene carbonate (EC): dimethyl carbonate (DMC) and 1 M LiPF6, where the reactivity of LNMO is known to negatively affect stability. The electrodes with SA also show a good stability over subsequent cycles of charge and discharge at 1C with capacity retention of 95% and 86% with respect to the initial cycles at the 100th and 200th cycle.