High strength multifunctional structural battery based on solid-state G-CNT carbon fiber hybrid composites

Commercially available PAN-based carbon fibers have a great potential of load-bearing electrodes and multifunctional battery applications which combine solid polymer electrolyte with carbon fiber hybrid composites. As a system level approach to aerospace application for a novel multifunctional structure-battery and its electrodes, three-phase carbonaceous materials were synthesized for one hybrid composites. Two types of surface modified carbon fabrics - a G-CNT carbon fabric and a CNT carbon fabric - were designed and fabricated with the pristine carbon fabric as a reference. The G-CNT(Graphene-CNT) carbon fabric was fabricated by synthesizing graphene layers on carbon fiber woven fabric surface and grafting CNT thereafter. The CNT carbon fabric was manufactured by grafting CNT forest on the surface of carbon fabric. The designed porous-nano carbon fabric electrodes have shown good electrical characteristic, especially the G-CNT Carbon electrode showed high electrical conductivity since it has good electrical and mechanical contact. The extended application as the structure-battery can have good electrical performance in terms of the specific energy and the specific capacity. The electrical capacity was evaluated for free-standing electrodes comprised of the G-CNT and the CNT-grafted carbon fabric anodes with a Li-metal cathode as the counter electrode in two electrode system. High strength multifunctional structural battery based on solid-state G-CNT carbon fiber hybrid composites was successfully fabricated and experimented for electrical and structural study. Multilayered G-CNT carbon fabric electrode had the lowest electrical resistance and the highest conductivity. In mechanical properties by tensile loading, the G-CNT carbon fabric electrode had high strength retention in a level of 92-95% of pristine carbon fabric. It can be highly competitive for the potential application of nanocomposite structure-battery electrode of multifunction. Future work on these architectures can include the enhancement of G-CNT carbon fiber hybrid cell for the advanced layered structural batteries.