The realistic 3D microstructure of lithium ion battery electrodes
plays a key role in studying the effects of inhomogeneous microstructures on
the performance of LIBs. However, the complexity of realistic
microstructures implements significant computational cost on numerical
simulation of large size samples. In this work, we used tomographic data
obtained for a commercial lithium ion battery graphite electrode to evaluate
the geometric characteristics of the reconstructed electrode microstructure.
Based on the analysis of geometric properties, such as porosity, specific
surface area, tortuosity, and pore size distribution, a representative volume
element that retains the geometric characteristics of the electrode material
was obtained for further numerical studies. In this work, X-ray micro-CT with
0.56 μm resolution was employed to capture the inhomogeneous porous
microstructures of lithium ion battery anode electrodes. The Sigmoid
transform function was employed to convert the initial raw tomographic
images to binary images. Moreover, geometric characteristics of an anode
electrode after 2400 1 C charge/discharge cycles were compared with those of
a new anode electrode to investigate morphological change of the electrode.
In general, the cycled electrode shows larger porosity, smaller tortuosity, and
similar specific surface area compared to the new electrode
