Periodic Reporting for period 2 - MIGHTY (Roll-to-Roll Manufacturing of Hierarchical Li-Ion Battery Electrodes)
Reporting period: 2021-08-01 to 2023-01-31
A first overarching objective is to develop manufacturing processes that allow to structure the battery electrode such that we can increase the energy and power that can be stored per unit mass and volume of battery.
A second overarching objective of the project is that from the start, it aims to take into account the scalability of the manufacturing processes that are developed. More specifically, Roll-to-Roll (R2R) coating us currently the only manufacturing process that is able to create battery electrodes at a suitable throughput and cost. All processes developed in this project are designed from early development phases to be compatible with R2R to ensure that the outcomes of our research are relevant to the EU’s industrial stakeholders.
Other advances include the discovery that energy can be stored reliably in anodes using a combination of three different energy storage mechanisms: Intercallation, alloying and plating. By balancing these three mechanisms, stable high energy density anodes were achieved. Finally, an unexpected discovery during this project was the observation that certain material formulations which allow for both storing energy (as in a battery) and harvesting light energy (as in a photo-voltaic cells). Finally, part of our work has been focusing on how to crease better structured active materials, which is being evaluated for patenting and could lead to a new spin out company being created.