Reinventing how these batteries are made also improves their
performance and recyclability.
(June 23, 2015) An
advanced manufacturing approach for lithium-ion batteries, developed by
researchers at MIT and at a spinoff company called 24M, promises to
significantly slash the cost of the most widely used type of rechargeable
batteries while also improving their performance and making them easier to
recycle.
“We’ve reinvented the process,” says Yet-Ming Chiang, the
Kyocera Professor of Ceramics at MIT and a co-founder of 24M (and previously a
co-founder of battery company A123). The existing process for manufacturing
lithium-ion batteries, he says, has hardly changed in the two decades since the
technology was invented, and is inefficient, with more steps and components
than are really needed.
The new process is based on a concept developed five years
ago by Chiang and colleagues including W. Craig Carter, the POSCO Professor of
Materials Science and Engineering. In this so-called “flow battery,” the
electrodes are suspensions of tiny particles carried by a liquid and pumped
through various compartments of the battery.