Additive Manufacturing for Naval Aviation Battery Applications

Texas Research Austin (TRI-Austin) will continue to partner with the University of Texas, Austin, to use additive manufacturing for fabricating and optimizing the lithium ion and electroactive metal electrode systems for which the team established proof of concept in the Phase I base period. The Aerosol Deposition Method (ADM) is a broadly applicable additive manufacturing technology that has been used primarily to deposit ceramic materials, but can potentially deposit any class of material required for a battery (ceramic, metal, polymer). The University of Texas will continue to conduct fundamental research to expand the materials palette of ADM to encompass polymers and electroactive metal oxides, and to produce metal oxide electrodes with selective laser sintering (SLS), while TRI will continue to optimize screen and extrusion-printing protocols. The team will build traditional and conformal prototype battery cells that demonstrate the benefits of additive manufacturing (AM) for improving key performance parameters (KPPs), and demonstrate the functionality of battery cells under Navy-relevant operating conditions. The expertise developed in Phase I will allow us to use printing as a high-throughput method to optimize individual components, and demonstrate AM benefits in improving battery KPPs.