ABOUT PULSELiON

The Impact of project PULSELiON

Lithium-ion battery cells with conventional active materials are reaching their limits in terms of energy densities. Also, safety issues arise with the utilization of liquid organic electrolyte, which is becoming even more critical with the recent introduction of advanced materials made to increase cell voltage and fast-charging rates. Hence, there is an urgent need for the development of innovative scalable manufacturing technologies based on new solid electrolytes that can also be combined with metallic lithium at the anode, leading to significantly enhanced energy density.
In this context, solid-state electrolytes enable overcoming current battery cells limitations in terms of voltage and safety (reducing the Lithium dendrite formation risk) leading to an increased intrinsic thermal and electrochemical stability.

The PULSELiON technology will:

  • Increase global competitiveness of the European battery ecosystem through delivering breakthrough technologies and knowledge in battery materials, cell design and manufacturing for next generation solid-state batteries
  • Increase safety and long-term stability of future batteries during their operational life
  • Accelerate the application of batteries in EVs and the renewable energy sector, due to increased energy, power and charging performance of batteries
  • Enable the production costs decrease to below € 75/kWh with the novel PULSELiON manufacturing technologies, when applied in mass productions
  • Advance sustainability and Life Cycle Assessment of the battery value chain by increasing the critical material recovery rate of the PULSELiON batteries during recycling to 90%, via eco-design of the battery production and recycling processes

THE CONCEPT

The PULSELiON project has the ambition to develop a manufacturing process for solid-state batteries, while improving the battery energy density (450- 475 Wh/Kg and 1300 – 1450 Wh/L), costs and safety. The main innovation in project PULSELiON is bringing Pulsed Laser Deposition (PLD) based solid-state battery manufacturing technology from TRL3 to TRL6.

PULSELiON project develops a manufacturing process for Generation 4b solid-state batteries that are based on a lithium-metal anode, a sulfide solid electrolyte, and a nickel-rich NMC cathode. A novel pulsed laser deposition (PLD) technique, already developed by project partner PULSEDEON, will be adapted and modified into a single-step vacuum process for safe and efficient manufacturing of anode components composed of lithium metal, protective layers, and sulfide-based solid electrolytes. The cathode layer will be based on conventional wet processing techniques.

THE PROJECT METHODOLOGY

Initially, the anode and cathode layers will be developed in small-scale to make coin cells and monolayer cells for optimising the materials and process. Solid-state cells will be developed with optimised process routes and will be upscaled to a pilot line proof-of-concept (TRL 6) by large scale manufacturing of 10 Ah solid-state batteries. Digitalisation will be incorporated in the process modelling (digital twinning) task with the inputs obtained from process upscaling and cell testing tasks, which will enable efficient process optimisation.

PULSELiON results