Light-weighting efforts are critical in extending the drive range of electric vehicles (EVs). Thermoplastic materials can offer light weighting, part integration and design freedom to help to meet critical material requirements.  An exercise is carried out to study the feasibility of thermoplastic materials for different components within the battery pack.

With rising consumer demand and massive regulatory tailwinds, the battery industry must increase production several-fold before the end of the decade. The factories have been announced, many have broken ground, and some are even approaching early production, but industry incumbents and new entrants alike are finding that scaling-up quickly is much harder than they expected. With rapidly evolving supply chains, a relatively immature ecosystem of equipment providers, and literally thousands of recipe and production parameters to optimize, it’s no wonder that the average gigafactory takes 4-5 years to reach profitable levels of yield and throughput. The semiconductor industry navigated a similar exponential growth in scale a few decades ago, and they did it through intelligent, focused investments in production metrology and analytics. In this talk, we’ll review relevant parallels between semiconductor and battery production, and how smart battery companies can beat their competitors to massive scale.

Our goal is to create a Li-ion battery that can exceed the performance demands of the technologies of the future, from consumer electronics to EVs. Founded in 2007 with locations in Fremont, California; Penang, Malaysia; and Hyderabad, India, we’ve taken a different approach to building a next generation cell and completely redesigned the mechanical structure of the battery, unlocking multiple advantages. Instead of stacking large sheets of electrodes like traditional batteries, we stack smaller electrodes orthogonally aligned to the small face of the battery cell. This electrode arrangement enables the use of an internal cell constraint system to manage the unique mechanical challenges posed by materials such as silicon that undergo large volume changes during operation. The unique cell design also enables fast charge, high cycle life, long calendar life and reduced internal temperature gradients improving performance at both the cell and system level. We’re currently scaling commercial production for the consumer electronics industry and are actively working with industry-leading EV OEMs. Dr. Wilcox will detail Enovix cell advantages and provide an update on the company’s progress.

Paul Jones, VP Corporate Strategy for Paraclete Energy, Inc, will demonstrate how a polymer matrix can cost-effectively leverage the high capacity of silicon to build cycle-stable Li-ion and solid-electrolyte batteries while providing a revolutionary range for electric vehicles.

GDI, in partnership with AGC, has demonstrated industrial manufacturing of advanced 100% silicon anodes. These 100% silicon anodes can be directly integrated into multiple existing cell designs without the need for prelithiation or compression. This enables existing cell companies to produce Li-ion cells with 100% silicon that will increase energy density by over 30%, enable hundreds of cycles of 15-min charging, and accelerate mass adoption of E-mobility.

In this talk, we highlight the need for inspection methods in battery cell manufacturing that deliver comprehensive information for 100% of cells produced to assess the true distribution of batch quality and to prevent quality escapes. We share how cell manufacturers and EV OEMs can implement Liminal’s high-throughput primary inspection systems in-line to distinguish between good and bad cells, and high-resolution secondary inspection systems to diagnose defects in bad cells.

Li-ion battery quality can vary greatly among manufacturers and sites. US manufacturers are experiencing many challenges that manufacturers in Asia previously faced, despite efforts to borrow technologies from these early pioneers. Detailed evaluations of battery manufacturing processes can identify and resolve potential problems before batteries enter the marketplace. This talk will share insights from conducting hundreds of factory audits worldwide, including common pitfalls and best practices.

The drying of electrodes is an essential and limiting process step in manufacturing lithium-ion batteries. Electrode properties and process speed are significantly restricted by heat and mass transfer mechanisms in conventional convective drying. Specifically, we investigated the effects on binder migration, adhesion of active layer onto the substrate, lifetime, and the role of binders as a function of distinct slurry drying rates (low or high) for both anode and cathode.