3. Conclusions
We fabricated a 100 μm thin-film cathode for TBs by using an acrylic
acid derivative terpolymer (LA136D) binder and studied the performance
in both single-cells and stacks. It is found the ψ of LA136D is
relatively low (39.2wt %). And due to the high adhesion strength,
LA136D can fabricate thin-film, non-circular, and mechanical robust
electrodes at a content of 1wt %, which contributes to only 0.05
MPa gas pressure increase in real hermetically sealed thermal battery
stacks. The single-cell and stacks electrochemical performance tests are
shown LA136D is well compatible with the cathode and molten salt
materials, and the LA136D thin-film cathode exhibits superior
electrochemical performance to the traditional pressed-pellet cathode.
Especially, in a 130s pulse discharging test, the TBs it is indicated
that LA136D thin-film cathode leads to a remarkable 440% reduction in
polarization and 300% enhancement in the utilization efficiency of
cathode materials, while with only ~0.05 MPa gas
pressure increment compare with the traditional pressed-pellet cathode.
Our work proves the feasibility of LA136D in fabricating safe thin-film
cathodes for high-efficiency and high-power TBs and contributes to
arousing the attention to gas production of binders in real thermal
battery stacks.