Polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) is an engineering plastic which has features of both fluoropolymers and general-purpose plastics: chemical resistance, thermal stability, UV-resistance and melt processability. Because of its well-balanced features, it has been used in many fields such as electronic materials, hollow fiber, fishing lines, chemical piping, and lithium-ion batteries (LIB).
Nowadays, PVDF is in high demand for LIB applications especially for electric vehicles. In the early days of LIB, PVDF was utilized as binding agent for cathode and anode because of its excellent electrochemical stability and good adhesion performance to electrode materials. The applications of PVDF in LIB have been expanded to gel-electrolyte and coated separator films for the improvement of safety and reliability of battery cells. In this article, recent work on lithium-ion dynamics in PVDF based gel-electrolyte is introduced in addition to general information of PVDF and its application for LIB.