Novel Chemistry and Nanostructured Cathode for Advanced Thermal Battery

The present thermal battery technologies cannot currently meet future requirements that call for higher power and capacity with a smaller footprint. The principal avenue for increasing thermal battery specific energy is to identify and develop new electrode materials that provide higher specific capacity and power performance. The overall objective of the proposed effort is to develop (design, fabricate, test and demonstrate) novel cathode materials for thermal battery with five times higher Li+ storage capacity and enhanced electronic conductivity. In Phase I, we will utilize a judicious combination of experimentation and knowledge of thermal battery systems to establish proof-of-concept for the newly proposed cathode material. CFDRC developed advanced silicon nanostructured anode, thermal battery research laboratory, experimental hardware and instrumentation will be leveraged for the cathode technology development. We will focus on characterization and demonstration of the proposed cathode"s properties through: (1) numerical based design of the proposed cathode, (2) synthesis of cathode material, (3) development and fabrication of custom experimental testing equipment, and (4) experimental testing and characterization of the proposed thermal battery cathode as well as complete single cell.