Chemical Vapour Deposition for Advanced Lithium-Ion Battery Materials and Supercapacitors

The ever-growing global presence of the electric vehicle is seen as a positive solution to decarbonise the transport industry. As a result, chemists and material scientists are aiming to develop materials that can be used as a backbone for improved electrodes and electrolytes for next-generation batteries and supercapacitors.
The research will focus on the generation of materials that are considered to be part of the next generation of batteries through the use of non-line-of-sight deposition techniques, including chemical vapour deposition (CVD) and atomic layer deposition (ALD). This will provide opportunities to produce current collectors and thin films that are well-defined. Through the methods chosen, the microstructure, morphology and chemistry of the composites can be finely-tuned to overcome potential challenges that battery materials face, such as volume changes during charging and the mechanical, chemical or electrochemical degradation of the electrodes.
Focus will be drawn to potential lithium- or sodium-chalcogenide intercalation or conversion type electrode, or electrolyte materials, such as Lithium sulfides, lithium phosphates and lithium anti-perovskites, and their sodium counterparts.
The initial stages will involve the synthesis of molecules that can be used as precursor material for CVD and ALD, which will then be characterised via a host of methods, including X-ray diffraction, NMR and elemental analysis. The thermal decomposition will be assessed, as will the ability of the precursor to create a thin film. The thin films will be characterised using scanning electron microscopy and will be assessed on its ability as a charge carrier.
The advantages of the chosen techniques (CVD and ALD) will be exploited to improve upon cell performance. These include the ability to deposit uniform layers on a surface which can be used as a protection against chemical degradation, the ability to deposit conformally active materials onto structured backbones, such as nano-tubes, -flakes or -rods. There is also the advantage of high levels of control over stoichiometry of new materials that will be tailored to suit the cell performance by appropriately choosing the precursor materials, changing the deposition parameters and through chemical doping.
The output of this work will seek to provide new materials that are suitable for use as a deposition precursor. These precursors will then generate a thin film which can be used as a charge carrier. The impact of this work will result in an optimisation of conditions for CVD or ALD, so that the thin film can be tuned to offer an improved performance as an electrode or electrolyte material.
The intended outcomes would be the generation of suitable thin films that can be used as electrode or electrolyte materials. Further outcomes could include the realisation of novel ways to produce chemical structures that could be later used in the deposition applications.
This research is carried out in conjunction with the Advanced Automotive Propulsion Systems (AAPS) CDT and holds relevance to their "Propulsion Electrification" research theme.

Impact Summary

This proposal has been developed from the ground up to guarantee the highest level of impact. The two principal routes towards impact are via the graduates that we train and by the embedding of the research that is undertaken into commercial activity. The impact will have a significant commercial value through addressing skills requirements and providing technical solutions for the automotive industry - a key sector for the UK economy.

The graduates that emerge from our CDT (at least 84 people) will be transformative in two distinct ways. The first is a technical route and the second is cultural.

In a technical role, their deep subject matter expertise across all of the key topics needed as the industry transitions to a more sustainable future. This expertise is made much more accessible and applicable by their broad understanding of the engineering and commercial context in which they work. They will have all of the right competencies to ensure that they can achieve a very significant contribution to technologies and processes within the sector from the start of their careers, an impact that will grow over time. Importantly, this CDT is producing graduates in a highly skilled sector of the economy, leading to jobs that are £50,000 more productive per employee than average (i.e. more GVA). These graduates are in demand, as there are a lack of highly skilled engineers to undertake specialist automotive propulsion research and fill the estimated 5,000 job vacancies in the UK due to these skills shortages. Ultimately, the CDT will create a highly specialised and productive talent pipeline for the UK economy.

The route to impact through cultural change is perhaps of even more significance in the long term. Our cohort will be highly diverse, an outcome driven by our wide catchment in terms of academic background, giving them a 'diversity edge'. The cultural change that is enabled by this powerful cohort will have a profound impact, facilitating a move away from 'business as usual'.

The research outputs of the CDT will have impact in two important fields - the products produced and processes used within the indsutry. The academic team leading and operating this CDT have a long track record of generating impact through the application of their research outputs to industrially relevant problems. This understanding is embodied in the design of our CDT and has already begun in the definition of the training programmes and research themes that will meet the future needs of our industry and international partners. Exchange of people is the surest way to achieve lasting and deep exchange of expertise and ideas. The students will undertake placements at the collaborating companies and will lead to employment of the graduates in partner companies.

The CDT is an integral part of the IAAPS initiative. The IAAPS Business Case highlights the need to develop and train suitably skilled and qualified engineers in order to achieve, over the first five years of IAAPS' operations, an additional £70 million research and innovation expenditure, creating an additional turnover of £800 million for the automotive sector, £221 million in GVA and 1,900 new highly productive jobs.

The CDT is designed to deliver transformational impact for our industrial partners and the automotive sector in general. The impact is wider than this, since the products and services that our partners produce have a fundamental part to play in the way we organise our lives in a modern society. The impact on the developing world is even more profound. The rush to mobility across the developing world, the increasing spending power of a growing global middle class, the move to more urban living and the increasingly urgent threat of climate change combine to make the impact of the work we do directly relevant to more people than ever before. This CDT can help change the world by effecting the change that needs to happen in our industry.