UltraDry – Unlocking the potential of sustainable and solvent-free fabrication of electrodes for Li-ion battery cells
Objectives
The overall objective of ULTRADRY is to contribute to improving the sustainability of battery production, by developing the fundamental understanding necessary to unlock the potential of dry processing of Li-ion battery (LIB) electrodes and reducing the F-content in the binder and electrolyte.
To achieve the overall objective, ULTRADRY will address the following sub-objecties:
- SO1: Developing the fundamental knowledge about binder fibrillation mechanisms, thereby enabling more sustainable (lower F-content) and/or electrochemically stable binders, as compared to the state of the art (SoA) fibrillizable binder PTFE.
- SO2: Investigate the interlink between the process parameters during the different dry process steps, the achieved microstructure of the electrodes, and its mechanical and electrochemical performance. The aim is to produce thicker electrodes (> 100 μm) with stronger mechanical adhesion to the current collector and equal or improved performance, using equal or lower binder content, as compared to conventional wet slurry cast electrodes.
- SO3: Develop a sustainable battery electrolyte based on salts containing Hückel anions with reduced number of F-atoms per molecule and tailored additives.
- SO4: To verify the compatibility of the developed electrolyte with the developed dry-processed electrodes. To obtain cell performance at least on the level of benchmark cells using wet slurry cast electrodes and LiPF6-based electrolyte.
- SO5: Perform a life cycle assessment based on ISO 14040-14044:2006 and techno-economic analysis to qualitatively and quantitatively evaluate the benefits of dry battery electrode fabrication in general and the developed binder and electrolyte systems specifically.
- SO6: Demonstrate the feasibility of applying the developments from ULTRADRY in an industrial battery setting.