Terahertz: An Enabling Technology for Lithium-Ion Battery Electrode Optimisation & Manufacturing

This proposal addresses the advances in Terahertz sensors and analysis required to implement Terahertz in a production environment for lithium-ion battery technology. This will be done in conjunction with key customers and leading academic collaborators in the field. An important challenge in lithium-ion battery production is to optimize the manufacturing process for electrode coatings (cathode & anode) to improve and optimise capacity whilst reducing and controlling manufacturing costs. Coatings are the 2nd stage is what can be a 6 stage manufacturing process overall. Addressing issues and optimising production at the coating stage can result in better product and enormous cost savings. With more than 60 plants for lithium-ion battery production currently being built in the EU and North America alone, a solution that helps address scale up and production bottlenecks is very timely and important to implement in the near future. Key performance indicators that determine electrode performance include coating density, thickness and conductivity. To date, there have been no sensor technologies capable of simultaneously measuring all three of these quantities accurately and rapidly during the in-line coating process. Terahertz sensors offer a solution that provides coating density, thickness and conductivity in one measurement. Terahertz sensors also have a successful track record in other in-line coating production applications. The coating density and thickness measured by Terahertz will dictate the capacity of the coatings used on the lithium-ion battery electrodes, and so will be the ultimate factors to optimise by changing the coating gap, line speed and other key parameters in coating production.