STTR Phase I: Manganese Oxide-Carbon Nanosheet Anodes for Extreme High Power Lithium Ion Batteries

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) project is the advancement of improved lithium ion batteries. The project will evaluate new battery chemistry enabling more rapid charging rates then currently available in the worldwide energy storage marketplace. Such high power density batteries would cater to a major emerging battery segment where current lithium ion battery technologies fall dramatically short. Successful development of this innovation will provide benefits to both current and future applications. Clearly, large scale deployment of a markedly superior energy storage device will have significant societal benefits by accelerating the move away from fossil fuel in many applications and products. For instance, a viable regenerative braking energy storage technology based on the proposed technology would result in a tremendous reduction in electricity used by subway trains, with a concomitant reduction of CO2 emissions. This STTR Phase I project proposes to address the core of the microstructure - performance relations in energy storing materials, answering a series of fundamental questions regarding how a charge carrier is reversibly or irreversibly stored at high rates in manganese oxide - carbon nanocomposite anodes. In conventional LIBs, it is the graphite-based anode that limits charging rates, with catastrophic lithium metal plating and dendrite growth occurring at increased currents. It is expected that many of the existing "Graphite - Inherited" paradigms regarding fast rate in anodes would be done away with, or substantially redefined with the proposed approach for designing high power lithium ion batteries based on an inexpensive hemp-derived carbon nanosheets and nanostructured manganese oxide anodes. A much clearer understanding of the synthesis - structure - property relations in such nanocomposites will have wide-reaching scientific and technological implications. Research and development activities will focus on structural optimization and manufacturing scalability along with fabrication and testing of near-commercial pouch cell form factors in order to demonstrate device-level performance and commercial viability of the proposed technology. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.