I-Corps: Batteries Enabled by Novel Nanostructured Scaffold Electrodes

这个i-Corps项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力是拥有先进的锂硫电池，以更低的成本增加电动汽车的续航里程。电动汽车最具挑战性的问题之一是行驶里程短，成本相对较高，这主要是由当前锂离子电池的性能造成的。这些电池适用于手机和电脑等小型电子产品，但它们的能量密度和价格不能满足目前大规模系统所需的需求。提出的电池技术可以达到比目前锂离子电池高5倍的能量密度，并降低制造成本。i-Corps项目将进一步开发一种工艺技术，在保持单个纳米材料性能的同时，实现海绵状的三维碳纳米管块状材料。利用这种新的可扩展的合成方法，碳纳米管之间的结/接触通过共价键无缝连接，确保了良好的电子传输。商业碳纳米管的典型方法会产生粉状材料，这就需要额外的制造工艺来制造实用的块状材料。与传统的电池电极制造方法相比，本项目采用的新制造方法使支架电极具有较大的比表面积，消除了电池中的非活性粘结剂和导电添加剂，从而显著提高了锂硫电池的能量密度。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is to have advanced lithium-sulfur batteries enable increased range of electric vehicles with lower cost. One of the most challenging problems in electric vehicles is the short driving distance and relatively high cost, which have been mainly caused by the performance of the current Li-ion batteries. These batteries are good for small electronics such as cell phones and computers, but their energy densities and prices do not meet the current demand required for large scale systems. The proposed battery technology can achieve an energy density five times higher than those of the current Li-ion batteries as well as lower the manufacturing cost.This I-Corps project will further develop a process technology that enables sponge-like three-dimensional carbon nanotube bulk materials while maintaining the properties of individual nanomaterials. With this novel scalable synthesis method, the junctions/contacts between carbon nanotubes are seamlessly connected by covalent bonding, ensuring excellent electron transport across the junctions/contacts. Typical methods for commercial carbon nanotubes result in powdery materials which necessitates additional manufacturing processes to make practical bulk materials. In comparison to the conventional methods for making battery electrodes, the novel manufacturing method used in this project results in electrically conducting scaffold electrodes with large surface areas, eliminating inactive binders and conductive additives in batteries, which allows for remarkably increasing the energy density of lithium-sulfur batteries.