Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Brookhaven National Laboratory have developed a cheaper method of manufacturing solid-state lithium-ion batteries by eliminating carbon dioxide present during the sintering process.
The team instead used pure oxygen to create bonds that matched the performance of coated surfaces, without that extra cost of the coating.
By doing this the team reduced the temperature of the sintering process for ceramic materials from around 1,000oc to 700oc.
The team demonstrated that maintaining a pure oxygen atmosphere during sintering could create very good bonding at temperatures up to 700oc, with none of the detrimental compounds formed.
The discovery could potentially be adopted relatively easily and quickly to the cell fabrication process without adding much energy penalty to the fabrication, say the team.
The findings were reported in the journal Advanced Energy Materials.
The paper was written by MIT doctoral student Younggyu Kim, professor of nuclear science and engineering and of materials science and engineering Bilge Yildiz, and Iradikanari Waluyo and Adrian Hunt at Brookhaven National Laboratory.
