Public Funding for Beacon Battery Design Ltd

This project looks to develop a new connection strategy for electrodes and tabs in lithium-ion battery cells leading to a 9% boost in energy density, 4% reduction in cost and smaller manufacturing footprint. The performance of lithium-ion cells has increased enormously since the first commercial cells were released in the 1990s. This performance increase has been largely driven by improvements in the chemical composition of the cathode and anode electrodes and the electrolyte. Over recent years the rate of this improvements has begun to plateau. Consequently, cell developers are looking for new chemical systems to demonstrate those improvements such as: solid-state, lithium-sulphur, and lithium-air batteries which are still many years from a commercial release. Conversely, the mechanical design of cells, the internal connections, tabs, tapes, electrode structure, has largely remained the same. By improving the mechanical design of lithium ion cells the performance can continue to increase while new cell technologies are developed over the next decade or so. The grant will be used to develop and validate prototypes of this new technology.