Project HighSafe II

„Sustainable, environmentally friendly, safe, and high energy density batteries: materials, cells and models“ – HighSafe II

The main objective of the Taiwanese/German collaboration in the HighSafe project was and is to develop key materials for the next generation of high-energy cells that meet the requirements for energy density, lifetime, safety, sustainability and availability of raw materials. To this end, the project pursued a number of new material development approaches that included both active materials and passive components such as additives, binders, separators and electrolytes. Promising approaches and concepts are to be pursued further, with a focus in the second phase not only on lithium-ion batteries but also on anode-free battery concepts, since a further significant increase in energy density can be expected by replacing the negative electrode with lithium metal.

In the second phase of the HighSafe project, TUM will focus on experimental characterization, modeling and simulation of active materials for electrodes in high-energy lithium-ion cells. In particular, electrochemical-mechanical modeling methods will be developed that can simulate the mechanical behavior during operation. During the course of the project, the active materials to be used will be defined by the partners. Specifically, a lithium nickel manganese oxide, LNMO, will be used as the cathode active material in combination with a silicon-containing graphite, SiG, as the anode active material. TUM will apply state of the art characterization methods to parameterize the electrode and cell level model done during the first phase of the HighSafe. Based on the electrode model, an electrochemically mechanically coupled cell model will then be developed to estimate, among other things, the local distribution of potential, Li-ion concentration and mechanical stress and strain in a format that will be determined during the project runtime.

Project partners of TU München in the HighSafe II project are National Tsing Hua University (NTHU), National Chiao Tung University (NCTU), National University of Tainan (NUTN) and National Taiwan University of Science and Technology (NTUST) from Taiwan, and Zentrum für Sonnenenergie- und Wasserstoff-Forschung, Baden-Württemberg (ZSW) and Helmholtz Institute Ulm (HIU) from Germany.