  An important objective of designing lithium-ion rechargeable battery cells is
to maximize their rate performance without compromising the energy density,
which is mainly achieved through computationally expensive numerical
simulations at present. Here we present a simple analytical model for
predicting the rate performance of battery cells limited by electrolyte
transport without any fitting parameters. It exhibits very good agreement with
simulations over a wide range of discharge rate and electrode thickness and
offers a speedup of >10$^5$ times. The optimal electrode properties predicted
by the model are of less than 10% difference from simulation results,
suggesting it as an attractive computational tool for the cell-level battery
architecture design. The model also offers important insights on practical ways
to improve the rate performance of thick electrodes, including avoiding
electrode materials such as LiFePO$_4$ and Li$_4$Ti$_5$O$_{12}$ whose
open-circuit potentials are insensitive to the state of charge and utilizing
lithium metal anode to synergistically accelerate electrolyte transport within
thick cathodes.
