Reliability-Based Design Optimization of Additive Manufacturing for Lithium Battery Silicon Anode

With the blooming of the electric vehicle market and the advancement in the lithium-ion battery industry, silicon anode has shown great potential for the next-generation battery. Using the state-of-the-art additive manufacturing technique (three-dimensional (3D) holographic lithography), researchers have demonstrated that silicon anode can be fabricated as a three-dimensional bicontinuous porous microstructure. However, the volume fluctuation of the silicon anode caused by lithiation during the discharging process causes continuous capacity decay and poor cycling life. Besides, uncertainties are inherent in the manufacturing and usage processes, making it crucial to systematically consider them in the silicon anode design to improve its performance and reliability. To fill the gap between current silicon anode research and future industrial need, this study established a digital twin to investigate the optimal design for silicon anode under the uncertainties of additive manufacturing and battery usage. This study started with developing multiphysics finite element models of the silicon anode lithiation process to investigate the volume fluctuation of silicon. Then, surrogate models were built based on the results from the finite element models to reduce computational cost. The reliability-based design optimization (RBDO) was employed to find the best design point for the silicon anode, in which an outer optimization loop maximized the objective function and an inner loop dedicated to reliability analysis. Finally, the Pareto optimal front of the silicon anode designs was obtained and validated, which shows over 10% improvements in the silicon anode's total capacity and rate capability.