Battery research - SkaLiS project funded with 2.2 million euros
Pouch cell Lab © HZB
SkaLiS Project Team © HZB
Powerful, compact, and affordable batteries are needed for the energy transition. Groups at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB) led by Prof. Yan Lu, Dr. Ingo Manke, and Dr. Sebastian Risse are conducting this research. They are investigating and developing novel types of electrode materials based on sulphur and silicon. Risse is now also coordinating a large project involving teams from HZB as well as from the University of Potsdam near Berlin, the Technische Universität Berlin, the Technische Universität Dresden and the Fraunhofer Institute for Material and Beam Technology IWS Dresden.
The SkaLiS project will commence July 2021 and receive a total of 2.2 million euros in funding over the next three years from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). SkaLiS stands for "Operando analysis-supported, trans-scale and scalable electrode design for increasing the performance of lithium-sulphur pouch cells".
The participating research groups in SkaLiS (FKZ: 03XP0398) intend to produce a lithium-sulphur (Li-S) demonstrator battery in pouch cell format whose cathode simultaneously exhibits structure at several scales. This approach should enable the Li-S battery to be considerably safer, offer longer service life, and higher performance than previous battery cells. For the assessment of industrial relevance, the consortium is supported by an industrial advisory board consisting of representatives from Airbus, Rolls-Royce, Wingcopter, Customcells and E-Lyte.
The HZB Institute for Electrochemical Energy Storage has already set up the appropriate infrastructure to accomplish this work. It is known as the Pouch-Cell Line – experimental batteries in flat pouches can be produced in the facility from raw materials in a few simple steps (see video clip).
In addition, the SkaLiS project will also make a six-figure investment in a new detector system for a small-angle X-ray instrument. It is currently being set up at the Berlin-Wannsee campus in Risse's electrochemistry group and is particularly suited for studying materials such as battery electrodes.
Prof. Yan Lu, head of the Institute, and her team of chemists produce the cathode material themselves. It consists of finely ground sulphur particles embedded in a carbon powder substrate that features specific porosities. After the experimental battery cell has been fabricated in Berlin and Dresden, the electrochemical performance, safety, and service life are analysed in detail by the research groups headed by Manke and Risse using operando methods. This allows immediate conclusions to be drawn about cell fabrication and cathode material synthesis, which are also important for industrial-scale applications.
- Disorder creates new properties in compound semiconductorsAn international research team has demonstrated that the intrinsic disorder of the compound semiconductor CuInSnS₄ can be exploited to influence its optical properties. While the atomic vibrations also sense the local disorder, their response is averaged over many different local environments and therefore appear isotropic, as expected for a cubic crystal. In contrast, the optical excitations, known as excitons, are much more sensitive to the local arrangement of atoms. Surprisingly, they show a direction-dependent optical response even though the average crystal structure is cubic. These findings shed new light on the relationship between disorder and material properties, opening up new options for targeted 'disorder engineering' in optoelectronic and photocatalytic devices.
- Perovskite solar cells: Predictions of long-term stabilityReliable statements about the long-term stability of perovskite solar cells are still difficult to make. However, a new study by Dr Carolin Ulbrich’s team, published in the renowned journal Joule, highlights which methods are useful for this purpose and identifies areas where further research is needed.
- Superconducting TES array X-ray spectrometer goes into operation at BESSY IIEurope's first and only TES-spectrometer at a synchrotron source is now in operation at BESSY II, developed within a collaboration between the HZB, the MPI-CEC (Mühlheim-an-der-Ruhr, Germany) and the NIST (Boulder CO, USA). The photon detection efficiency of the new instrument exceeds that of wavelength-dispersive X-ray emission spectrometers by a factor of 100 to 1000. It will be used to investigate the electronic properties of atomically thin layers, nanostructures and highly diluted atomic and molecular samples. The team is looking forward to receiving exciting research proposals from the user community.