Experimental studies in the battery thermal management have found that increased charging rates during battery cycling is the main reason behind the overheating of lithium-ion batteries. Many different electrode materials have been investigated for improving battery thermal performance and calendar life. The present work reports a way to parameterize and categorize electrode materials based on their thermal performance. A coupled thermo-chemical model was developed for deriving the heat generation by electrode particle of different materials. The heat generation associated with lithium-ion transport was computed from four possible mechanisms: polarization heating, entropic heating, joule heating and heating contribution from plastic deformation. The particle model was scaled to battery dimension to model thermal diffusion in the battery. The model was used to create a set of five material indexes that categorize the electrode materials based on their thermal performance under condition of excess loading. A parametric analysis was conducted to compare the thermal performance of six candidate electrode materials (for cathode and anode) using the merit indexes and the results were validated against past experimental data. The effect of variable charging rates on thermal generation was analyzed. Finally, the paper identified the material properties which affect the thermal performance of battery systems. (C) 2018 The Electrochemical Society.