SBIR Phase I: Cold Atmospheric Plasma Sensor for In-Line Metrology of Battery Electrode Manufacturing

The broader/commercial impact of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is to enable more sustainable, scalable, and cost-effective lithium-ion battery (LIB) production. The team is developing a novel sensor that can be readily integrated into the LIB electrode manufacturing processes to provide real-time measurements of multiple battery electrode properties. Such a sensor is essential for detecting electrode defects and process changes. The average battery factory loses up to $275 million per year from scrapping defective electrodes and overbuilding battery packs to compensate for variability in electrodes, leading to global annual losses of up to $26 billion by 2030. This sensor can transform current LIB manufacturing practices by creating opportunities for intelligent decision-making capabilities, that can significantly reduce the economic cost and environmental footprint of battery manufacturing by enhancing the efficient use of raw materials, energy, and capital resources. The sensor will also serve as a key enabling technology to provide critical information to accelerate process development for scalable and cost-effective manufacturing of next-generation batteries. The intellectual merit of this project stems from using cold atmospheric plasmas (i.e., atmospheric pressure, weakly ionized gases near room temperature) interacting with materials for non-destructive measurement of multiple lithium-ion battery electrode properties. Current electrode metrology solutions rely on separate, specific, and often destructive measurement techniques for LIB electrode properties. This plasma sensor uses the information-rich electrical, thermal, and chemical interactions of plasma with an incident material, combined with the expressive power of physics-based artificial intelligence (AI) models, to predict multiple critical electrode properties in parallel and in real-time. To enable integration of the plasma sensor into high-volume electrode production lines, this project seeks to design and integrate an array of plasma sensors into a pilot electrode coating process for real-time measurement of multiple electrode properties at various spatial resolutions and develop an advanced multivariable control system to ensure reliable sensor performance in view of exogenous and environmental variabilities and disturbances in high-volume manufacturing processes. 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.