Digitalization of Battery Manufacturing: Current Status, Challenges, and Opportunities

Abstract

As the world races to respond to the diverse and expanding demands for electrochemical energy storage solutions, lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) remain the most advanced technology in the battery ecosystem. Even as unprecedented demand for state-of-the-art batteries drives gigascale production around the world, there are increasing calls for next-generation batteries that are safer, more affordable, and energy-dense. These trends motivate the intense pursuit of battery manufacturing processes that are cost effective, scalable, and sustainable. The digital transformation of battery manufacturing plants can help meet these needs. This review provides a detailed discussion of the current and nearterm developments for the digitalization of the battery cell manufacturing chain and presents future perspectives in this field. Current modelling approaches are reviewed, and a discussion is presented on how these elements can be combined with data acquisition instruments and communication protocols in a framework for building a digital twin of the battery manufacturing chain. The challenges and emerging techniques provided here is expected to give scientists and engineers from both industry and academia a guide toward more intelligent and interconnected battery manufacturing processes in the future.The ORCID identification number(s) for the author(s) of this article can be found under https://doi.org/10.1002/aenm.202102696.

The ARTISTIC Online Calculator: Exploring the Impact of Lithium‐Ion Battery Electrode Manufacturing Parameters Interactively Through Your Browser

“…The integration in digital twins of the infrastructure and workflows behind our calculator could be also foreseen. [49] From a scientific perspective, we hope that the battery community will see the ARTISTIC online platform as a tool to explore the vast manufacturing parameter space accessible through our 3D models to establish a deeper understanding of the manufacturing-microstructure-electrochemistry relationships in a collaborative way. Up to date, the platform accounts for 220 registered users, ca.…”

A Roadmap for Transforming Research to Invent the Batteries of the Future Designed within the European Large Scale Research Initiative BATTERY 2030+

“…Even for the relatively new LIB chemistries, optimized manufacturing processes and giga‐scale production have helped reduce cell‐level costs by an order of magnitude over the last 10 years. Battery cell manufacturing [ 10 ] can generally be categorized into three phases: electrode production, cell assembly, and cell finishing. The electrode productions phase comprises several steps, such as mixing, coating, drying, slitting, calendaring, [ 124 ] the coating and drying steps being the most cost‐intensive processes.…”

“…Manufacturing of future battery technologies [10] is addressed in Battery 2030+ roadmap from the perspective of Industry 4.0 and digitalization, where the outcomes of the remaining chapters such as BIG-MAP, self-healing and sensorization come together in a holistic way in the manufacturing of the battery cells. [117] The power of modelling and of AI will be exploited to deliver digital twins both for innovative and breakthrough cell designs, and for manufacturing approaches, avoiding or substantially minimizing classical trial-and-error experimentation.…”

“…This paper summarizes the roadmap developed by the always BATTERY 2030+ consortium and is complemented by a number of articles in this special issue, including also one paper regarding the state‐of‐the‐art. [ 2–11 ]…”

“…This paper summarizes the roadmap developed by the always BATTERY 2030+ consortium and is complemented by a number of articles in this special issue, including also one paper regarding the state-of-the-art. [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11] The market for high-energy-density rechargeable batteries is currently dominated by the lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery (LIB), which performs well in most applications and has decreased dramatically in cost. However, current generation LIBs are approaching their performance limits.…”