Conformal Graphene-Based Coatings for No-Cobalt, High-Performance Lithium-Ion Batteries

The increasing modernization of consumer products and vehicular technologies has led to rapidly increasing societal dependence on advances in energy storage solutions to power these applications. In particular, the emerging market of electric vehicles is growing at a remarkable pace and thus has been the main driver in advancing performance targets for next-generation batteries. Specifically, the unique nature of electric vehicles requires an advanced battery system with comprehensive improvement over the state-of-the-art technologies in energy, power, safety and operability for optimal driving range and wide temperature operability. To maximize the energy performance, a significant degree of recent effort has been devoted to enhance current lithium-ion batteries by developing alternative active material (cathode) chemistries with high theoretical specific energies. However, these experimental cathode materials have significant material degradation and instability issues that lead to limited cycle life and compromised operability, precluding their commercial adoption. Volexion, Inc. provides a graphene-based protective coating solution to address these challenges, which minimizes active material degradation and stabilizes interfacial side-reactions in addition to simultaneously lowering the cell impedance and further improving the power performance. In this Phase I project, Volexion will collaborate with Argonne National Laboratory and leverage external resources to demonstrate the commercialization potential of high energy density, cobalt-free lithium nickel oxide cathode material by addressing its critical issues in cycle life and safety performance. These efforts will advance the technical feasibility of Volexion technology with high- energy lithium-ion battery systems for electric vehicle applications and provide pathways for next- generation energy storage solutions to meet the commercialization targets in the U.S. market. Volexion’s graphene-based coating technology has the potential to concurrently address the complex technical issues inherent across the list of emerging lithium-ion battery materials. Therefore, successful integration and commercialization of graphene-based coatings for next-generation high- energy cathode materials will have significant implications in enabling high-performance energy storage systems for other emerging commercial applications beyond electric vehicles, including drones, power tools, grid storage devices, and defense and military applications. In addition, the successful completion of this project will result in minimized cobalt content from the active materials used in commercial applications. This outcome is well-aligned with the current focus of the lithium-ion battery industry due to the high raw material costs and societal concerns over mining operations, supply chains, and waste management streams associated with cobalt – as delineated by the DOE’s Critical Minerals Initiative.