Ilika p.l.c. (Southampton, U.K.; www.ilika.com) announces that it is taking part in a three-year project to develop protected anodes for lithium sulfur batteries, led by Johnson Matthey Plc (London; www.matthey.com) and supported by Innovate UK and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). £365,133 of the grant will be used to fund project activities at Ilika.
Johnson Matthey Plc is a global speciality chemicals company and a leader in sustainable technologies. Using its expertise in chemistry and advanced materials, the company develops a range of high value added, high technology products and services, including high-performance battery systems. Other partners in the project are Williams Grand Prix Engineering Ltd, the University of Oxford and the University of Warwick.
This project will develop an innovative protected lithium anode approach, via Ilika’s high-throughput materials development technique, to discover new electrolyte composition options and fabricate a free-standing, lithium-containing protected anode/separator for integration into pouch cells. The novel protected anode will mitigate a commonly experienced problem in lithium-sulfur cells, the so-called polysulfide shuttle effect, leading to enhanced performance cells that can be made with existing cell-fabrication methods. The pouch cells being developed in this project are high capacity, low cost batteries for large scale renewable energy storage and therefore address a distinct market segment to the Internet of Things (IoT) applications for which Ilika’s Stereax batteries are designed.
Commenting on this grant award, Graeme Purdy, Ilika CEO, said: “This project brings together international leading scientists and industrial partners with the resources, skills and experience to deliver and exploit this new concept. The partners have the know-how to design and develop new battery components and take them through to roll to roll electrode fabrication and pouch cell manufacture and evaluation.”