SBIR Phase I: Development of Multi-layer Electrode Platform for high performance Li-ion batteries using low-cost manufacturing process

This SBIR Phase I project seeks to eliminate the trade-off between power density and energy density that currently limits the design and application of mass-market consumer goods such as: electronics, power tools and transportation. These products require high power for communication uplinks, regenerative braking, acceleration or physical actuation. However these products also require high energy for long-duration base loads which affect the total application run time or endurance of the product. Current battery technologies hinder the ability of designers and engineers to create batteries with both high power and long-duration as these qualities are inversely related. Thus a compromise on the performance and quality of their products is necessitated, resulting in either a high powered or a long-duration battery. Through this project advancements in battery technology will be achieved in order to enhance the quality, power density, and power performance of batteries and battery operated mass-market consumer goods across a multitude of industries. This project aligns with the NSF's mission as it seeks to promote the progress of science pertaining to battery technology and applications while increasing the prosperity of businesses that develop, manufacture, market and sell these products through increased product quality and market competitiveness. The strong technical innovation in the proposed project is the development of a novel platform technology for manufacturing high-performance Lithium-ion batteries. This platform will revolutionize how batteries are designed and manufactured in applications from electrical vehicles to consumer electronics. Slot-die coating, the modern state-of-the-art manufacturing process, produces electrodes within a very limited thickness range through a one-shot coating process. Slot-die coating limits the range of electrode thickness able to be produced and makes multi-layer electrode production impossible due to the one-shot coating process employed. This project will utilize a ground-breaking approach to produce thick, multi-layer electrodes with functional gradients and faster coating speeds. This will not only increase energy density of the resulting battery, but it will also reduce the cost of production. The Phase I goal of the purposed project is to develop multi-layered electrode architectures with maximized energy and power performance through computational modeling and experimentation. In order to accomplish this goal the project will incorporate cell performance simulation software to effectively capture the design principle required for multi-layer electrode development. The scope of this project will encompass extensive testing on Lithium-ion pouch cell prototypes in order to validate the performance advantages of the designed electrode architectures.