In Lithium Ion Batteries, recharge and discharge occurs through the movement of lithium ions between the cathode and anode. The material that takes in and discharges the lithium ion is called active material. The production method of this active material is split into two separate processes.
- First is chemical bonding process between active materials taken from materials called precursors.
- Second is to adjust the synthesized active materials and coat onto the electrode current collector.
Active materials are often produced by the solid phase method.
Solid phase method consists of mixing numerous solid raw materials together and a calcinations process. To perform the solid phase procedure efficiently, minimizing the amount of unreacted materials and controlling the calcinations temperature is essential. This is done through fine grinding and precision mixing of the raw materials, making powder-processing technology an important aspect of the production process.
Fine particle production of raw materials
Mixing solid state materials are performed by using raw material particulates. The larger the individual particle sizes are – the longer time it takes for calcinations process. Also for a reaction to occur, more than two different materials need to come in contact with each other.
The larger the particle size, the possibility of unreacted materials appearing in the product becomes larger. Since each raw material has a different specific density, it is prone to becoming non-uniform. Larger particles have a greater tendency of this problem, with the reactivity declining as well due to the reduction on contact area between the particles.
To solve this problem, fine particle production of the raw material is needed with an emphasis put on minimizing the amount of metal contamination. This process can be performed with classifier integrated ACM pulverizer, fluidized bed jet mill AFG and spiral jet mill. In recent trends, a classifier integrated target type jet mill is also utilized for producing finer and sharper particle distributions.
