Application of a Polyacrylate Latex to a Lithium Iron Phosphate Cathode as a Binder Material

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript is devoted to utilization of polyacrylate as a binder in cathode electrode preparation.
It is very actual topic. I suggest to accept the manuscript after some minor corrections:
1. In the introduction I suggest to mention about utiliation of polyacrylate as a binder of negative electrodes i.e. Komaba S. et al. in Electrochemical and Solid-State Letters (2009), 12(5), A107-A110, Han, Zhen-Ji et. al in Energy & Environmental Science (2012), 5(10), 9014-9020.
2. It also should be mentioned that the utilization of polyacrylate as a binder of positive electrode is for the first time.
3. The electrode material was consisted of a mixture CMC and PAL. Did you try to manufacture electrode consisted of LFP/SP/CMC, LFP/SP/PAL? Otherwise one should also take into account the interaction between CMC and PAL as well as CMC and SBR? 
4. What is the origin of LFP? It it is commercial material than manufacturer should be given.
5. Could you explain why LFP/pVDF exhibited so low electrode performance? It is confused as it is known that LFP/pVdF is used as cathode material. (Hu Yan et al in Advances in Chemical Engineering and Science, 6, 2016, 149-157)?

Author Response

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Reviewer 2 Report

In this current manuscript, the authors developed a water based Poly Acrylate Latex (PAL) binder for the LiFePO4 electrode and compared its potency with two other binders. Among the other two binders, one is water based (Styrene Butadiene Rubber; SBR), and another one is organic solvent soluble (Polyvinylidene fluoride; PVDF). They have established the fact that PAL binder is promising due to its environmental and as well as the electrochemical benefits over the other two. The manuscript is well written and the presentation is easily understandable. I have couple of suggestions/queries before I recommend its publication.

It is shown through the CV curve (Figure 1) that at higher voltage (beyond 4.2 V), both the water soluble binders are electrochemically stable as compared to the PVDF. However there is a huge particle size difference in between the SBR and PAL. Although the particle size controlling is beyond the scope of this study, I would suggest the author to  dedicate few lines on the ideal particle size and how it can be achieved (citing some references)(Figure 2).

Figure 3: the peel strength difference between SBR and PAL seems very high. I can see that the due to the less dispersed nature of SP/SBR, the distribution on Fig. 3 (a) seems non uniform. I am just curious about the reason behind the higher peel strength for SBR as compared to the PAL.

 

 

 

Author Response

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