The Effect of Glass Fabric Separator Elongation on Electric Property in Structural Battery

Abstract

Structural battery has been researched extensively to combine the functions of the battery and structure without gravimetric or volumetric increments compared to their individual components. The main idea is to employ carbon fabric as the reinforcement and electrode, glass fabric as the separator, and solid-state electrolyte which can transfer load. However, state-of-the-art solid-state electrolytes do not have sufficient load carrying functionality and exhibiting appropriate ion conductivity simultaneously. Therefore, in this research, a system which has both battery and load carrying capabilities using glass fabric separator and liquid electrolyte was devised and tested to investigate the potential and feasibility of this structural battery system and observe electric properties. It was observed that elongating separator decreased electrical behavior stability. A possible cause of this phenomenon was the elongated glass fabric separator inadequately preventing the penetration of small particles of the cathode material into the anode. This problem was verified additionally by using a commercial separator. The characteristic of the glass fabric and the interface between the electrode and glass fabric needed to be further studied for the realization of such a load carrying structural battery system.