Evaluation of Cathode Materials with Lithium-Metal Anodes: Baseline Performance and Protocol Standardization of Coin Cells


 The collaborative evaluation of electrode materials across multiple research entities requires standardized electrochemical testing protocols to enable reliable, one-to-one comparisons between different systems of interest. Similar to the work done by Long et al. on protocol standardization for coin-cell testing with graphite anodes, we introduce two standardized testing protocols designed to quickly evaluate important electrochemical properties of cathode materials paired with lithium-metal anodes. These two separate protocols provide information on kinetic and thermodynamic capacity losses, rate- and voltage-dependent cycling capacities, instabilities at high voltage and high cycling rate, and overpotentials at various states of charge. We then apply these protocols to four commercially available cathode materials to establish benchmark performance metrics that can be used for the screening and evaluation of new cathode designs.