Tape Casting Process for Thin Cell Fabrication

Presently there is no established manufacturing route for producing very thin (<10 mils) high quality, uniform composition electrode and separator components for thermal batteries over one inch or more in diameter. The proposed effort is to investigateliquid slurry tape casting as a potential route to address this deficiency. Tape casting is already an established process for producing thin components for lithium-polymer batteries and ceramic devices. Some work performed in the early to mid 1990's byWestinghouse, which is now the intellectual property of the Enser Corp. has shown that it is possible to make thin electrode and separator components for high temperature rechargeable batteries. These batteries had a very similar electrochemical couple toones used in thermal batteries. When these components were tested in batteries they demonstrated very good uniform performance over many charge-discharge cycles. Several emerging military applications are signaling the need for thermal batteries that arecapable of providing high power at only modest to very low energy. This edge-of-the-envelope set of requirements dictates the need for thin cell components that optimize high power performance while packaging only the limited cell capacity required tomeet mission requirements.