Battery Materials: Next-Generation & Beyond Lithium Ion

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Revolutionizing Automotive Energy Storage: Investigating the integration of Cell-to-Pack (CTP) and Cell-to-Chassis (CTC) concepts for heightened energy densities and cost efficiency, coupled with a heightened emphasis on mixed cell chemistry concepts both on pack and cell level. Next-gen technology development: Navigating fluctuating raw material prices with Sodium-Ion Batteries (SIB) and Embracing Innovations in Anode Engineering and (Semi-)Solid-State technology for diverse applications including EV business and beyond. Diversification of cell manufacturer’s product portfolio: Increasing significance of market segmentation addressing the variety of needs for applications such as Bus, Truck, Off-Highway and ESS, and the standard EV business.

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Current lithium-/sodium-ion batteries (LIBs/SIBs) are unable to meet the rapidly-growing energy demand, and one of the major reasons originates from the limited specific capacity of carbonaceous anode materials. Therefore, manufacturers and researchers are shifting their focus towards materials with greater specific capacities. Among these materials, Sn has garnered increasing attention owing to its outstanding specific capacity in both LIBs (994 mAh/g) and SIBs (847 mAh/g) and excellent compatibility in both battery chemistries, showing great potential as one of the next-generation anode candidates.Nonetheless, its commercial use is significantly impeded by the capacity degradation during cycling. This degradation primarily results from the anode pulverization, triggered by the huge volume changes during charging and discharging. To address this problem, a novel nanostructured free-standing Sn-based ribbon is developed via a fast, one-step and solvent-free melt spinning process, and can be directly applied as anode, without the need of conventional electrode making and use of current collector. The anode pulverization issue has been significantly mitigated by the well-designed nanostructures and alloy phases, as well as other effective optimization strategies. As a result, the ribbon anode has been demonstrated in LIBs and SIBs and shown substantial improvements in specific capacity, cycle life, and rate capabilities.
In this talk, we will provide a brief overview of the melt spinning technique and some of our recent work in the development of ribbon anodes. We hope these findings can offer new insights into developing “next-generation” high-performance alloy-based anode materials.

Advanced sodium ion batteries have already achieved energy densities competitive with lithium ion, however, despite promises of its improved safety properties, its safety metrics have not yet been clearly defined. This session will comprehensively describe the root causes of battery thermal runaway, compare the safety abuse data sets of various sodium ion battery chemistries. It will also cover recent trends in the sodium battery markets and how the sodium supply chain can alleviate today's critical material bottlenecks faced by the industry.

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The need for more ecological and sustainable production technologies is a general demand for competitive battery manufacturing factories in the future. The energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions are cost-driving factors and at the same time have high increasing social impacts. Solutions for making electrode production greener can be realized by avoiding or replacing toxic and harmful materials, e.g. by aqueous processing. Also less solvent requiring processes may lead to less extensive drying efforts. Screen-printing technology for electrode manufacturing combines both environmental benefits and enables for thick film electrode production with high areal capacities especially for high energy cells (up to 5…8 mAh/cm 2 ). In this work it will be shown that the solvent amount can be decreased by about 20% by processing of highly filled pastes. In addition, it is possible to enable a multilayer printing and therefore sequential and fast drying as well as near-net-shape printing leading to less waste upon production. The thickness and high areal capacity of the printed coatings lead to new design aspects of the electrode structure affecting full cell performance. Some insights will be given with regard to current-rate capability, useable capacity, porosity and efficiency of ion- exchange pathways. The screen-printing process is a scalable and established series production technology. The high accuracy, energy efficiency and low emissions are strongly in line with the goals of green production.

The need for more ecological and sustainable production technologies is a general demand for competitive battery manufacturing factories in the future. The energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions are cost-driving factors and at the same time have high increasing social impacts. Solutions for making electrode production greener can be realized by avoiding or replacing toxic and harmful materials, e.g. by aqueous processing. Also less solvent requiring processes may lead to less extensive drying efforts. Screen-printing technology for electrode manufacturing combines both environmental benefits and enables for thick film electrode production with high areal capacities especially for high energy cells (up to 5…8 mAh/cm 2 ). In this work it will be shown that the solvent amount can be decreased by about 20% by processing of highly filled pastes. In addition, it is possible to enable a multilayer printing and therefore sequential and fast drying as well as near-net-shape printing leading to less waste upon production. The thickness and high areal capacity of the printed coatings lead to new design aspects of the electrode structure affecting full cell performance. Some insights will be given with regard to current-rate capability, useable capacity, porosity and efficiency of ion- exchange pathways. The screen-printing process is a scalable and established series production technology. The high accuracy, energy efficiency and low emissions are strongly in line with the goals of green production.

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For decades the manufacturing process of batteries and its components has shown only incremental improvements to cost efficiency, energy efficiency and low yield rates. It requires a significant technology step to harvest new efficiencies in capex, opex, sustainability and new battery storage solutions. Advances in battery material science combined with experience from the semiconductor manufacturing industry now enable significant progress in electrode manufacturing, new battery concepts, solid state batteries and safer energy storage.

Several technology players have been attempting to establish and scale a dry electrode manufacturing process that overcomes the high energy demand, low reliability, low flexibility, high carbon footprint and use of toxic materials of today’s wet coating processes. The biggest advances though, are only possible by combining material preprocessing and new high speed additive manufacturing. Dry electrode printing reduces energy consumption and carbon footprint, eliminates all use of toxins and forever chemicals while delivering full scalability and high volume cost efficiencies. Dry printing of electrodes is the first step to printing complete batteries, in arbitrary shape and form, including SSB materials, eliminating metal foils and integrate inherent safety features – all at competitive high volume efficiency.

For decades the manufacturing process of batteries and its components has shown only incremental improvements to cost efficiency, energy efficiency and low yield rates. It requires a significant technology step to harvest new efficiencies in capex, opex, sustainability and new battery storage solutions. Advances in battery material science combined with experience from the semiconductor manufacturing industry now enable significant progress in electrode manufacturing, new battery concepts, solid state batteries and safer energy storage.

Several technology players have been attempting to establish and scale a dry electrode manufacturing process that overcomes the high energy demand, low reliability, low flexibility, high carbon footprint and use of toxic materials of today’s wet coating processes. The biggest advances though, are only possible by combining material preprocessing and new high speed additive manufacturing. Dry electrode printing reduces energy consumption and carbon footprint, eliminates all use of toxins and forever chemicals while delivering full scalability and high volume cost efficiencies. Dry printing of electrodes is the first step to printing complete batteries, in arbitrary shape and form, including SSB materials, eliminating metal foils and integrate inherent safety features – all at competitive high volume efficiency.

The development of cost-effective, high-performance battery manufacturing technologies is essential to support the U.S. electric vehicle, energy storage, and consumer electronics markets. Shifting from wet to dry processing for battery electrodes
promises to lower capital costs, energy usage, and environmental impact. This presentation explores our work on powder-based additive manufacturing techniques to produce cathode and solid electrolyte films without solvents. Using methods like selective laser melting and cold spray, these energy-efficient processes minimize material waste while achieving production speeds comparable to conventional slurry casting. I will discuss the additive manufacturing processes, the critical factors influencing film quality, and cell performance in comparison to traditional slurry-based methods. This work was performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344.

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Solid-state batteries offer the promise of improved energy density and safety compared to lithium-ion batteries. However, the electro-chemo-mechanical evolution of materials at solid-solid electrochemical interfaces is different than at solid/liquid interfaces, and contact evolution in particular plays a critical role in determining the behavior of solid-state batteries. Using X-ray tomography, cryo-FIB, and finite-element modeling, we show that anode-free solid-state lithium metal batteries are intrinsically limited by current concentrations at the end of stripping due to localized lithium depletion. This causes accelerated short circuiting compared to lithium-excess cells. Based on these results, the beneficial influence of metallic interfacial layers on controlling lithium evolution and mitigating contact loss from localized lithium depletion will be discussed. We also show that alloy anodes in solid-state batteries can exhibit improved interfacial stability and enhanced cyclability compared to Li-ion batteries. A comprehensive study on 12 alloy materials shows that lithium trapping is a key limitation for most materials. Further characterization of alloy anodes reveals the dynamic nature of interfacial fracture during reaction processes. Taken together, these findings show the importance of controlling chemo-mechanics and interfaces in solid-state batteries for improved energy storage capabilities.

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