Inventors : Professor Michael de Volder & Heng Wang, Institute for Manufacturing
Battery materials expand when charged and contract when discharged, which can affect the battery performance, its functional lifetime and its safety, as well as mechanical issues such as how the individual battery cells fit together.
Building on years of systematic experimentation, the inventors have examined how repeated charging and discharging cause battery materials to swell and contract, and how these mechanical changes influence performance, lifespan, and safety throughout a battery’s service life.
Based on over 100,000 hours of battery cell data measurements generated in their lab, the inventors have developed an easy-to-use in-situ battery testing device which is simple and intuitive to use. Their device is agnostic to battery chemistry so can be used on new battery materials in development as well as on current commercially-available batteries.
The system measures both the reversible swelling during battery recharge cycles and the irreversible swelling which develops over time. Newer materials tend to be more sensitive to swelling during the charging cycle, making this approach more important than ever.
The question for the i-Team is to investigate the market potential for this new technique, considering all the stages of the battery value chain, from laboratory researchers to developers of new materials and battery pack-manufacturers, as well as recyclers. They will be asked to consider how this new device can be used to improve the safety of EV batteries in cars, drones and battery storage systems, as well as how the inventors can best accelerate the adoption of this approach in the EV industry.