The global automobile industry has established a long-term trend toward electrification technology, attracting industry chain manufacturers to rush to invest. The Asian battery manufacturers plan to respond a series of challenges like to balance of supply and demand on cellmaking and materials side, ensure the source of mineral and all materials and technical competition between Japanese, Korean and Chinese manufacturers. This presentation will provide an overview of the above cellmakers’ planning, especially cover both the technical comparison, market and product segmentation to show the future development in Asian xEV LIB Manufacturers.

Saft will be presenting the progress of its development of Lithium Manganese Iron Phosphate cathodes (LMFP). Performance results on 30Ah cylindrical cells, 35Ah Prismatic cells, and 10Ah Pouch cells will be shared. Saft is commercializing LMFP for defense, aerospace, and industrial applications.

Lithium-ion cell manufacturing with SemiSolid platform is currently being adopted and deployed by global partners. This chemistry agnostic platform offers highly reliable, safe, and cost-competitive process and cell solution to EV and ESS markets.

The talk will focus on how the energy density of LFP batteries are being improved through innovative pack designs while maintaining the attributes of safety, faster charging, and longer life. Additionally, new game-changing Phosphate Cathode Active Materials (CAMs)with higher voltages and improved energy densities while not sacrificing the core positive attributes of LFP, including no Nickel and no Cobalt will be presented.

As the battery industry transitions from GWh to TWh, we at C4V are diving deeper into the basics of high yield and smarter factories that can be scaled faster and run profitably. C4V's proprietary machine learning solution called Digital DNA, along with a highly efficient machine designed by the core engineers in association with the machine builders, would be discussed in detail during this presentation.

Increasing the battery electrode thicknesses is one way to enhance cell energy densities; however, increased thickness is usually accompanied by reduced rate performance. The introduction of laser-ablated micro pores or channels in thick battery electrodes shows promise for improving the performance of lithium-ion batteries (LiBs). Advanced predictive modelling reveals the limitations of planar electrodes for fast charge performance and the importance of microscale features for improving ion-transport and energy density. We will present the technical challenges of accomplishing the laser ablation and describe scale-up of our processing methods to enable high-throughput roll-to-roll fabrication of micro-structured thick battery electrodes.

To enable consumer acceptance of battery electric vehicles, the industry must focus on improving cost, range and charging speed. Today’s EV batteries are designed with increased energy density, higher operating voltage, and fast charging capabilities. These design changes are necessary to improve EV performance. PPG offers solutions to meet these critical needs, designed for efficient and effective high-volume manufacturing, and enabling design evolution while ensuring safety, durability, and performance.

By first exploring the limitations of thick planer electrodes, advanced predictive models were prepared to identify optimal electrode patterns for improved cycling performance. Herein, the impact of electrode laser patterning will be discussed in detail. First, materials characterization techniques (SEM-EDS, XRD) were used to explore the effect ultrafast laser ablation had on the electrode materials’ morphology and structure. Next, the improvements in the patterned electrodes’ electrochemical cycling performances and degrees of wetting will be compared to a pristine baseline case. Finally, the correlation between experimentally obtained data and model predictions will be presented and discussed.

This presentation will cover an introduction to Freyr’s battery technology based on 24M technology, in addition it will address the battery value chain strategy in the Nordic region.

LiFePO₄ attracts renewed interest as a safe and low-cost cathode material candidate. Operating above the melting of LiFePO₄ (980^oC), the melt-synthesis benefits from fast reaction kinetics and a relatively wide thermodynamic stability window. This approach allows a diverse range of raw materials and mixtures, including coarse particles and spend LiFePO₄. Possible purification of the melt or upon solidification opens door to less pure non-expensive raw materials. A good understanding of the thermodynamics of the Li-Fe-P-O system facilitated the selection of the best conditions to prepare a high purity LiFePO₄ by melt-synthesis at the pilot scale.

This presentation will discuss research and development efforts at Argonne National Laboratory aimed at advancing cathode materials that are rich in manganese and have the potential to be cost competitive for electric vehicle applications and beyond. Materials based in layered LiMn0.5Ni0.5O2, layered-layered xLi2MnO3•(1-x)LiMnNiO2, and a novel cobalt-free design based on a spinel framework will be presented. Some advantages will be highlighted and specific challenges to further development discussed. 

Nanoramic developed a proprietary battery technology, Neocarbonix ™ At The Core, that enables Tier-I battery companies and automotive OEMs to achieve next-gen battery performance using existing equipment and processes. It allows for PVDF-free cathode electrodes manufactured with an NMP-free coating process, enabling environmentally friendly, lower cost, high-power and energy-dense batteries. This technology is also an enabler of Si-dominant anodes, using a water-based coating process and inexpensive forms of Si.

The widespread use of Li-ion batteries requires highly sustainable, low waste, and low-cost production. In the case of layered oxide cathodes, these methods must satisfy the production of highly uniform active material particles that are typically dense, low surface area, near spherical in shape, and are ~10 µm in size. This talk will discuss strategies of making highly engineered cathode particles by purely dry processes than can result in yield increases and waste reduction. It will be shown that such methods can be used to produce materials with even higher complexity than is currently possible with traditional methods.

We have developed a one-pot process that forms durable, single-crystal cathode powders that is more consistent, lower-cost, and a higher-performance method of creating cathode active material for lithium-ion batteries. It’s the key enabler of metal to cathode active material (M2CAM), a process that employs direct metal powders, cutting multiple steps of the resource-intensive metal conversion process out of the battery supply chain. The session will describe the benefits of utilizing the One-Pot/M2CAM process and how the technology can drastically improve the way battery cathodes are manufactured.

With the exponentially growing global battery demand accompanying the rapid rise of electric mobility, the role of battery cathode materials has gained increasing importance due to its significant impact on performance and cost of the cell. Umicore is a global leader in the cathode materials manufacturing space with over 20 years of experience and expertise in development of specialized products using innovative processes, driven primarily by customer demand. In this presentation, we will provide a brief overview of our NMC materials technology for the current market and future direction based on observed trends in the field of clean transportation. We will describe some of our novel approaches to improve the cost and performance of these cathode materials, and our focus on sustainability and ethical sourcing of raw materials. Umicore views the closed-loop business model of recycling materials obtained from end-of-life batteries critical to our operation in the future and expects a greater share of future sourcing through this route.

EVE started to develop cylindrical cell models in 2001. Today EVE has become one of the leading cell suppliers in primary & 18650 cylindrical cell market. Through the integration of advanced materials, innovative structure design, and extreme production efficiency, EVE has successfully developed a series of 46XX cylindrical cells with high energy density, fast charging, excellent reliability, and low cost products for electrical vehicles applications.

Almost all commercially-viable natural graphite anode powders are pitch (carbon) coated. The current pitch coating process is environmentally damaging, expensive, inconsistent, and hard to implement. This presentation baselines half- and full-cell data from several globally-sourced natural graphites (both SPG and CSPG), and highlights the environmental benefit, lower cost, higher performance, and simplicity of Forge Nano's coating equipment over pitch coating. 

Mass production of lithium-ion battery electrodes has expanded dramatically in the last few years, and there have been a number of new developments within in-line sensors to meet safety and quality requirements of the final battery cell. This presentation provides an overview of the technology used in in-line metrology along with recent developments that benefit battery electrode manufacturers and improve their yield and final cell safety.