About the project
Ensuring the safety of lithium batteries is a top priority in battery development. Safety concerns are inherent in current lithium-ion batteries and stem from the use of organic liquid solvents. Solid state batteries offer the potential for inherent safety and higher energy density. However, despite these advantages, their current practical performance is hindered by significant challenges in materials and manufacturing processes.
This project will employ a novel and disruptive manufacturing approach, never used before in the battery field, to produce all-glass solid-state batteries with enhanced performance and safety. The fusion draw method, used commercially for smart phone screens, will be employed to produce ultrathin and virtually defect-free films that will be sandwiched together to form the batteries. The project builds on the success of a previous project, led by Chris Holmes and Pier Sazio, in which the same manufacturing method was used for producing planar optics. The selection, synthesis and characterisation of the materials to build the batteries will be done in collaboration with battery experts from the School of Chemistry (Nuria Garcia-Araez and Andrew Hector). The project will also involve two postdoctoral researchers (one hosted in ORC and the other one in Chemistry), and a suite of word-class manufacturing and characterisation facilities, leveraging a recently awarded, £1.2 million, research grant.
