Self-healing functionalities for long lasting battery cell chemistries

Topic description

Specific Challenge:

Increasing our daily dependence on batteries calls for increased efforts in ensuring their quality, reliability and life (QRL). While sensing is the natural instrument to monitor and control QRL, it can also serve to identify defective components and local spots in the cell that need to be repaired by injection or addition of self-healing functions.

The target is to deliver a proof-of-concept for the realization of battery cells with the proper repairing additives and to elucidate the modus operandi of the specific self-healing functionality by advanced analytical tools. Proposals should aim at developing innovative auto-repairing approaches for cell components such as mechanisms for on-demand administration of molecules that can solubilize a resistive deposit or at injecting self-repairing polymers to restore a defective electrode within the battery. They should lay the foundation for a sound scientific platform on battery self-healing relying on chemical/physical tooling. Whatever the pursued approach, it will have to comply with the electrochemical environment of the targeted cell environment, be readily adaptable to battery cell mass production processes and not hinder subsequent recycling process. The competitive advantage over alternative approaches like replacement or recycling or second-use should be demonstrated.

The Commission considers that proposals for Research and Innovation Actions of a 3-year duration and requesting a contribution from the EU of between EUR 2 and 4 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-12-2020 and LC-BAT-13-2020; 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.

• Increased quality, reliability and life (QRL) of the battery system by extending the lifetime of the battery cells and maximizing their performance
• Industrial opportunities for exploiting new concepts and technologies for integrating self-healing capabilities in the battery cell.

LC-BAT