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Battery Breakthrough Solves Major Electric Car Problem

It’s no secret that batteries are the most expensive part of an electric vehicle. As such, this is the root of the industry’s problem and a roadblock to making larger strides into the mainstream market. Researchers around the world are racing to solve this problem, and now a team of German scientists say they’ve taken a crucial step in that direction.

The team, from the Fraunhofer Institute for Material and Beam Technology IWS, have devised a new production process for EV batteries that features coating their electrodes with a dry film of chemicals rather than liquids. According to them, this process is less energy-intensive, which means it’s cheaper, and it is also better than the standard process in that it does not involve toxic solvents.Lithium Battery Cell voltage

"Our dry transfer coating process aims to noticeably reduce the process costs in electrode coating," project manager Dr. Benjamin Schumm told Phys.org. "Manufacturers can eliminate toxic and expensive solvents and save energy costs during drying. In addition, our technology also facilitates the use of electrode materials that are difficult or even impossible to process wet-chemically."

The latter part of Schumm’s comment is important: in the future, batteries will be a lot more energy dense than today’s version, and this will require the use of these materials. The team’s binder polymer-based alternative to expensive and toxic wet chemistry comes in anticipation of the batteries of the future, many of which, according to Schumm and his colleagues, will be solid-state.

"These batteries will be able to store more energy in the same volume than today's lithium-ion batteries," the IWS project leader said.