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Title: DOE Phase I STTR FInal Report: Conductive Carbons by Design: Electrochemically Tailored Carbon Nanotube Conductive Additives for High-Rate Battery Electrodes

Technical Report ·
OSTI ID:1861483

The integration of low-cost, electrochemically manufactured carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are the collective focus of this Phase I and Phase II project, and one major way that significant performance improvements, and ultimately cost reduction advancements, will be made to advanced batteries. Obstacles for CNT integration into advanced batteries are that cost is too high (4-10 times higher than carbon black), the physical properties (diameter, length, and wall thickness) have not been optimized for high-rate performance (i.e. 2C discharge and 6C charge rates), and CNT dispersion is difficult. Phase II will emphasize solutions to these problems for Ni-rich layered cathodes and high-Si/C anodes, as well as partnering with the DOE Battery Manufacturing R&D Facility (BMF) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) to develop a lithium-ion cell-level design enabled by SkyNano CNTs that substantially improves on the 250-275 Wh/kg industry state-of-the-art. In addition, the proposed multilayer architecture approach will leverage existing ORNL expertise in thick electrode design and enable us to demonstrate this increased performance at high areal loadings of >4 mAh/cm2, approaching twice the industry standard today and enabling an overall decrease in inactive mass (separators, Cu foil, Al foil) for the packaged cell.

Research Organization:
SkyNano
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Transportation Office
DOE Contract Number:
SC0020811
OSTI ID:
1861483
Type / Phase:
STTR (Phase I)
Report Number(s):
DOE-SkyNano-0811-1
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English