Sponsored by Chroma.
Lithium-ion batteries face increasingly severe challenges regarding safety and lifespan under high-rate charging. One of the most critical concerns is the phenomenon of lithium plating—when the charging current is too high or the temperature is too low, lithium-ions fails to intercalate effectively into the anode and instead deposit as metallic lithium on the surface of the graphite.
This leads to capacity degradation, thickening of the solid electrolyte interphase (SEI) layer, and may even cause internal short circuits and thermal runaway. These safety risks, originating from microscopic electrochemical reactions, cannot be adequately investigated using the conventional two-electrode structure of lithium-ion batteries. As it provides only combined voltage-capacity data, this structure does not allow for distinguishing between the independent behaviors of the anode and the cathode. As a result, the mechanism of lithium plating becomes difficult to identify. This is where the advantages of a three-electrode testing setup become particularly significant.
