SBIR Phase I: Development of Multi-layer Electrode Platform for high performance Li-ion batteries using low-cost manufacturing process

这个SBIR一期项目旨在消除功率密度和能量密度之间的权衡，目前限制了大众市场消费品的设计和应用，如：电子产品，电动工具和交通工具。这些产品需要高功率用于通信上行链路、再生制动、加速或物理驱动。然而，这些产品对于长时间的基本负载也需要高能量，这会影响产品的总应用运行时间或耐久性。目前的电池技术阻碍了设计师和工程师创造高功率和长寿命电池的能力，因为这两种品质是成反比的。因此，他们必须在产品的性能和质量上做出妥协，从而产生高功率或长时间使用的电池。通过该项目，将实现电池技术的进步，以提高电池和电池驱动的大众市场消费品的质量、功率密度和功率性能。该项目与美国国家科学基金会的使命一致，因为它寻求促进与电池技术和应用有关的科学进步，同时通过提高产品质量和市场竞争力，促进开发、制造、营销和销售这些产品的企业的繁荣。拟议项目的强大技术创新是开发一种用于制造高性能锂离子电池的新型平台技术。该平台将彻底改变从电动汽车到消费电子产品的电池设计和制造方式。槽模涂层是现代最先进的制造工艺，通过一次涂层工艺在非常有限的厚度范围内生产电极。槽模涂层限制了能够生产的电极厚度范围，并且由于采用一次涂层工艺而无法生产多层电极。该项目将采用一种突破性的方法来生产具有功能梯度和更快涂层速度的厚多层电极。这不仅会提高电池的能量密度，而且还会降低生产成本。该项目的第一阶段目标是通过计算建模和实验开发具有最大能量和功率性能的多层电极架构。为了实现这一目标，该项目将结合电池性能模拟软件，以有效地捕捉多层电极开发所需的设计原则。该项目的范围将包括对锂离子袋电池原型进行广泛的测试，以验证所设计的电极结构的性能优势。

This SBIR Phase I project seeks to eliminate the trade-off between power density and energy density that currently limits the design and application of mass-market consumer goods such as: electronics, power tools and transportation. These products require high power for communication uplinks, regenerative braking, acceleration or physical actuation. However these products also require high energy for long-duration base loads which affect the total application run time or endurance of the product. Current battery technologies hinder the ability of designers and engineers to create batteries with both high power and long-duration as these qualities are inversely related. Thus a compromise on the performance and quality of their products is necessitated, resulting in either a high powered or a long-duration battery. Through this project advancements in battery technology will be achieved in order to enhance the quality, power density, and power performance of batteries and battery operated mass-market consumer goods across a multitude of industries. This project aligns with the NSF's mission as it seeks to promote the progress of science pertaining to battery technology and applications while increasing the prosperity of businesses that develop, manufacture, market and sell these products through increased product quality and market competitiveness.The strong technical innovation in the proposed project is the development of a novel platform technology for manufacturing high-performance Lithium-ion batteries. This platform will revolutionize how batteries are designed and manufactured in applications from electrical vehicles to consumer electronics. Slot-die coating, the modern state-of-the-art manufacturing process, produces electrodes within a very limited thickness range through a one-shot coating process. Slot-die coating limits the range of electrode thickness able to be produced and makes multi-layer electrode production impossible due to the one-shot coating process employed. This project will utilize a ground-breaking approach to produce thick, multi-layer electrodes with functional gradients and faster coating speeds. This will not only increase energy density of the resulting battery, but it will also reduce the cost of production. The Phase I goal of the purposed project is to develop multi-layered electrode architectures with maximized energy and power performance through computational modeling and experimentation. In order to accomplish this goal the project will incorporate cell performance simulation software to effectively capture the design principle required for multi-layer electrode development. The scope of this project will encompass extensive testing on Lithium-ion pouch cell prototypes in order to validate the performance advantages of the designed electrode architectures.