Invited Paper MS-MoM3
Manufacturing Challenges in Batteries: Lessons from Current Technology for Future Energy Storage Developments

Monday, November 7, 2016, 9:00 am, Room 103A

The evolution of today’s highly successful lithium ion battery manufacturing technology over 25 years provides many useful lessons, pro and con, for future storage technologies. Along with the development of higher performance/lower cost cathodes, anodes, electrolytes or other cell components, efficient cell designs and low cost/highly scalable manufacturing techniques are needed for any new technology to suceed. This talk will discuss prevailing Li-ion cell design and manufacturing methods which, despite evident success, have inherent inefficiencies which in the author’s view have prevented the full exploitation of Li-ion chemistry. A “clean sheet” redesign developed at MIT and 24M Technologies will be discussed, based on a new semi-solid electrode form that enables manufacturing of high performance Li-ion cells by radically simpler and lower-cost methods. Concepts from this case study that may be transferable to new storage technologies include the need to minimize of non-energy-storing materials content in any device design; the benefits of reducing the tortuosity of ion transport pathways; how multiple functions can be served by a single component, and the importance of developing manufacturing processes that are cost-effective at small production scale, yet can be readily scaled to GWh volumes.

Support for this work by the U.S. Department of Energy through the ARPA-E program, the Vehicle Technologies Office of EERE, and the Advanced Battery Materials Research (BMR) program is gratefully acknowledged.