UCL, Synthomer and Nexeon have together been awarded £7million
in Innovate UK funding to develop significantly better
materials for Li-ion batteries. The work is an essential step
to achieving electric vehicles (EVs) with a range of 400 miles
and above.
The project, named SUNRISE (after Synthomer, UCL &
Nexeon’s Rapid Improvement in the Storage of Energy), will
develop better battery materials based on silicon as a
replacement for carbon in the cell anode, and optimise cell
designs for automotive application.
“We are delighted to be working on this project, which is so
important for the future development of battery electric
vehicles, and leverages the unique facilities at UCL in
partnership with Nexeon and Synthomer to deliver real world
research impact,” said Dr Paul Shearing (UCL Chemical
Engineering) who co-leads the project for UCL with Professor
Dan Brett.
Innovate UK will fund the majority of the £10million project as
part of a Faraday Challenge. SUNRISE will also enhance the UK’s
position as a centre of excellence for battery development, and
support the materials manufacturing supply chain in the UK.
Nexeon will lead the silicon material development and scale-up
stages of the SUNRISE project, while Synthomer will lead the
development of a next generation polymer binder optimised to
work with silicon, and ensure anode/binder cohesion during a
lifetime of charges. Nexeon and UCL will jointly lead the work
on material characterisation and cell performance.
Silicon is currently being adopted as a partial replacement for
carbon in battery anodes, typically up to the level of 10%
replacement, but problems caused by expansion when the cells
are charged and discharged remain a hurdle.
Project SUNRISE addresses these issues and allows more silicon
to be used, further increasing the energy density that can be
achieved in the cell. This will lower the cost and improve the
performance of power sources, reducing the time required for
EVs to achieve mass adoption.
“The challenges in developing the next generation of range
enabling EV battery technology creates new opportunities for
partners in the material supply chain”, said Dr Robin Harrison,
Synthomer’s Global Innovation Director. “Synthomer is pleased
to build upon its existing experience in battery binder systems
in order to realise the revolutionary potential in the SUNRISE
silicon anode.”
“The biggest problems facing EVs - range anxiety, cost, charge
time or charging station availability - are almost all related
to limitations of the batteries”, said Nexeon CEO, Dr Scott
Brown. “Silicon anodes are now well established on the
technology road maps of major automotive OEMs and cell makers,
and Nexeon has received support from UK and global OEMs,
several of whom will be involved in this project as it
develops.”
Ruth McKernan, Innovate UK Chief Executive, added: “The Faraday
Battery Challenge is breaking new ground because it offers for
the first time a co-ordinated programme of competitions across
research, innovation and scale-up. It will therefore draw the
very best of the UK’s world-leading research into commercial
technologies and put UK businesses at the forefront of electric
vehicle battery development.”
The Faraday Battery Challenge is an investment of £246m over
four years to help UK businesses seize the opportunities
presented by the transition to a low carbon economy, to ensure
the UK leads the world in the design, development and
manufacture of batteries for electric vehicles.
It announced in July, and is the first in a series of Research
Challenges managed by Innovate UK as part of the Industrial
Strategy Challenge Fund (ISCF). It is hoped that successfully
creating a viable battery supply chain will lead to the
creation of hundreds of UK jobs, according to Innovate UK.
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