Additive Manufacturing Next Generation Supergen Energy Storage Devices

Energy storage is an integral part of consumer lifestyles and there is continued demand in this area to power electronic devices. Related to this is having the ability to store energy produced by renewable sources such as through the generation via solar panels, and having it readily available to meet power demands is a challenge which if meet, would represent a major breakthrough in electricity distribution. Currently such energy storage devices are not fit for purpose mainly due to their performance characteristics (energy output, energy storage etc) being insufficient for end user demands.

Globally researchers are constantly developing new materials that have the potential to revolution energy storage but that is only part of the story. The ability to control the architectures of such energy devices is critical and important to obtain maximum performance characteristics. This is an often overlooked parameter which should go hand-in-hand with material design and production.

One technology that is advancing rapidly is 3D printing which has the benefit of being able to produce unique structures without masks or templates, quickly, easily, and affordably, on the spot and as needed for a wide variety of applications ranging from industrial parts to biomedical organs. As applications of this technology expand and prices of 3D printers drop, the first big implication is that more goods will be manufactured at or close to their point of purchase or consumption, indicating that in the future household-level production might be viable.

We propose to take 3D printing and provide the ability for scientists to 3D print energy storage devices rapidly, on the spot and to develop a novel and advanced bottom-up fabrication route to produce energy storage devices. This will allow unique 3D printed structures for supercapacitors and batteries which will give rise to significant benefits in the energy storage characteristics of these devices. This research project will also demonstrate engineering scale-up solutions for the pre-commercial manufacture and incorporate new SUPERGEN energy storage materials into our manufacturing processes to provide rapid fabrication and device implementation leaving a legacy of advanced energy storage device manufacturing in the UK, which can be exploited for its benefit.

The key impact of this research is economic. Improvements in manufacturing processes and technologies will lead to substantial commercial benefits for the UK. This project supports one of EPSRC's key research priorities of ENERGY STORAGE. We believe the application aligns perfectly with the SUPERGEN consortium, meeting the remit of "processing/manufacturing at relevant scale" since we will provide a novel additive manufacturing approach for the rapid production of supercapacitors and 3D batteries.

The remit of "application and integration of materials into devices" is also met, because during the lifetime of the SUPERGEN project, new energy storage materials will result. Consequently, we will be able to rapidly add these into our work packages to allow novel energy storage architectures to be realised with these state-of-the-art energy materials. As highlighted in the SUPERGEN call for proposals we provide rapid state-of-the-art processing and manufacturing with innovative production processes developed from our cutting-edge laboratory research; this has a substantial impact upon the SUPERGEN project. The impact of this research is specifically:

Worldwide academic impact will result from significant advances in the development of a novel manufacturing additive process where 3D graphene structures can be rapidly produced. The understanding realised from this work will allow extensions into the incorporation of other graphene derived and related molecules such as functionalised graphenes or other 2D materials such as boron nitride, MoS2, MnO2 and so on. In fact, as new graphenes and 2D materials are discovered/fabricated and need to be implemented into 3D structures or manufactured into useful architectures, this work will bridge the gap between translation from the laboratory into prototype devices.

Major commercial and academic impact in many fields will result from having the ability to print, in a single stage, 3D graphene architectures (including the packaging) for energy storage which will be mutually beneficial to all the SUPERGEN consortium members and our project partners. These devices will provide a step-change in performance over conventional devices and the development of the 3D printing technique will open the door to many other new applications.

Impact upon the growth of UK supercapacitors and battery companies through technology transfer/licensing, of our outputs allowing business grow and expansion; their ability to remain competitive within Europe and compete on a global scale and will substantially add to the growth of the UK's economy. The market for electrochemical energy conversion and storage technologies for clean generation/storage of energy via fuel cells, solar photovoltaics, batteries and supercapacitors represents a >$10Bn global market, currently dominated by Li ion (LIB) batteries. Emerging technologies are projected to grow this by >20% pa. Our outputs of this project involve the 3D printing of these energy storage technologies which will yield significant performance benefits over existing utilised technology. If we assume that we were able to license our technology and obtain a very modest 1% of this
market, that equates to £10 million pa. Clearly our research will have a tremendous economic benefit to the UK's economy.


3D printing is changing our world and the technology is advancing rapidly, with the market expected to grow to £3Bn by 2020. Developing the ability to 3D printing useful 3D architectures allows a competitive edge. For example, if we were able to license our graphene inks (see WP1) and our bespoke 3D printer and assume again a modest 1% of the 3D printing market, this equates to £30 million pa. Again, our research has an immense economic benefit and the investment in this project will be substantially repaid back for the benefit of the UK.