Novel methodologies for autonomous discovery of advanced battery chemistries

Topic description

Specific Challenge:

The performance and durability of existing batteries are limited due to insufficient knowledge in managing the complex and dynamic processes taking place in the materials and in particular at the interfaces/interphases within the battery cell. The long-term challenge is to integrate advanced multi-scale computational modelling, materials synthesis, characterization and testing to perform closed-loop autonomous materials findings and interphase engineering that would accelerate by at least a factor of 5 the discovery of new battery chemistries with ultra-high performances.

The target is to develop a pilot materials platform for computational and experimental material characterization that would pave the way towards the development of a full-scale autonomous battery Material Acceleration Platform (MAP) enabling closed-loop materials discovery, automated characterization, device-level testing and addressing aspects related to manufacturability and recyclability. The pilot MAP should deliver a blueprint of the targeted autonomous material discovery platform that could demonstrate key features such as: the ability to use modeling, simulation and machine learning techniques to determine optimal materials composition, the ability to autonomously direct an automated material synthesis robot in optimizing selected battery materials and the ability to perform autonomous analysis and interpretation of experimental data and of deriving previously unknown structures and compositions. The pilot MAP should demonstrate the potential of this novel approach on a specific test case targeting the optimization of specific advanced or emerging battery chemistries. It should be sufficiently flexible to be adaptable for future disruptive battery chemistries, concepts and technologies and for integrating aspects like manufacturability, ageing, degradation and recycling of importance to the entire battery lifecycle. Proposals should be specifically targeting battery interfaces such as the Solid Electrolyte Interphase and the Cathode Electrolyte Interphase that are critical for the battery functionality, as well as controlling their formation, composition and morphology.

The Commission considers that proposals for Research and Innovation Actions of a 3-year duration and requesting a contribution from the EU up to EUR 20 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals of another duration and/or requesting other amounts.

The project partners shall make provisions to actively participate in the common activities of the large scale research initiative on Future Battery Technologies and in particular: coordinate technical work with the other selected projects under topics LC-BAT-13-2020 and LC-BAT-14-2020; and contribute to the activities of the Coordination and Support Action defined under the topic LC-BAT-15-2020. In particular, the project partners will need to conclude a written collaboration agreement with the other projects selected from these topics as indicated in the Grant Conditions.

Note that special Grant Conditions will apply for projects granted under this topic. Please see under Call Conditions.

• Demonstrate a fundamental paradigm shift in the materials discovery process for clean energy materials, yielding to a significant acceleration in the development cycle for future battery materials and technologies, which cannot be achieved using conventional Edisonian type trial-and-error approaches.
• Demonstrate the potential to achieve a 5-10 fold acceleration in the materials discovery process, e.g. through a reduction in the number of required experimental trials.
• Demonstrate the ability to improve the performance of the selected battery interfaces with the developed methodologies.

LC-BAT