Overcharge
is a hazardous abuse condition that has dominant influences
on cell performance and safety. This work, for the first time, comprehensively
investigates the impact of different overcharge degrees on degradation
and thermal runaway behavior of lithium-ion batteries. The results
indicate that single overcharge has little influence on cell capacity,
while it severely degrades thermal stability. Degradation mechanisms
are investigated by utilizing the incremental capacity–differential
voltage and relaxation voltage analyses. During the slight overcharge
process, the conductivity loss and the loss of lithium inventory always
occur; the loss of active material starts happening only when the
cell is overcharged to a certain degree. Lithium plating is the major
cause for the loss of lithium inventory, and an interesting phenomenon
that the arrival time of the dV/dt peak decreases linearly with the increase of the overcharge degree
is found. The cells with different degrees of overcharge exhibit a
similar behavior during adiabatic thermal runaway. Meanwhile, the
relationship between sudden voltage drop and thermal runaway is further
established. More importantly, the characteristic temperature of thermal
runaway, especially the self-heating temperature (T
1), decreases severely along with overcharging, which
means that a slight overcharge severely decreases the cell thermal
stability. Further, post-mortem analysis is conducted to investigate
the degradation mechanisms. The mechanism of the side reactions caused
by a slight overcharge on the degradation performance and thermal
runaway characteristics is revealed.
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