Let Cyclic Electrochemical Data Speak for Your Energy Storage Material and Processing

Abstract

Efforts to improve performance, like energy and power density of electrochemical energy storage devices (batteries, capacitors, and super-capacitors), are being made using a range of experimental and computational tools. The most common strategy involves exploring new material chemistries, developing advanced synthesis routes, and advanced ways to integrate these materials into device architectures. Although it is desirable to evaluate the performance of such efforts at a fixed cell format, not all studies conduct testing across the same cell formats. Specific performance normalized per mass of active material has been adopted as a universal indicator of performance, but it is not a reliable way to compare across cell formats. We propose a new mass normalization, i.e., the mass of electrochemical participants, to calculate specific performance. This new specific performance makes it possible to efficiently compare the efficacy of materials, synthesis, and cell assembly across different cell formats. We developed a framework to comprehensively report materials, synthesis, and cell assembly, and performance data, which facilitates succinctly reporting all performance indicators, including charge discharge curves over all cyclic stability assessments. The new specific performance and mass of the electrochemical participants per unit area of the electrode allows us to create a calculator to estimate performance at any commercial device-level cell format from measured data at the laboratory-level cell. The new specific performance also helps in optimizing the coating thickness and the loading of the active material. The framework can be adapted by journals to facilitate the reporting of data in a comprehensive way. Leveraging this framework, we have also compiled a database (hosted at https://power.tattvasar.com/) by extracting pertinent data from existing literature.