New high-throughput methods of investigating polymer electrolytes

High-throughput battery materials testing based on test cell arrays and dispense/jet printed electrodes

“…Moreover, the fabrication of battery electrodes are characterized by complex technologies like mixing which are not easily suited for the preparation of continuous material libraries. For example, synthesizing electrodes with continuous composition spreads were performed with alloy electrodes that were sputtered or evaporated simultaneously from two or more spatially separated sources (Alcock et al 2011;Fleischauer et al 2003;Jun et al 2014;MacEachern et al 2015;Whitacre et al 2003). Unfortunately, this technology is not relevant for many interesting and industry relevant electrode materials.…”

“…Although the research needs in the field of secondary batteries are high, and the large amount of possible electrode and electrolyte materials opens an almost infinite number of different cell configurations, actually a rather small number of publications report HT methods for the investigation of complete electrochemical cells, perhaps due to the complexity of the total setup, where test cell arrays with liquid electrolyte (Clemmons 2016;Cekic-Laskovic et al 2014;Takada et al 2004) are even more challenging to realize than cells with solid state thin film electrolyte (Alcock et al 2011;Fleischauer et al 2003;Whitacre et al 2003). Thus, until now the great majority of battery experiments is conducted based on single cell preparation.…”

“…Our cells will be low cost, because hundreds of them can be fabricated on the same substrate with the help of Fraunhofer IZḾ s glass panel fabrication line. Moreover, in contrast to the already existing in-house proprietary technologies of ILIKA (Alcock et al 2011) and Wildcat Technologies (Takada et al 2004;Zhu et al 2016), we provide a complete platform for producing electrochemical test cell arrays, including HT devices intended for use as fully finished or as work-in-progress (partially finished) goods, to any interested lab.…”

A Combinatorial Approach toward the Discovery of Electrolyte Formulations for Non-Aqueous Electrochemical Energy Storage Devices

“…2,3 More recently, these efforts have been paralleled by the use of quantum mechanical calculations to explore the properties of yet to be synthesized materials incorporating just about every stable element in the periodic table as illustrated by the pioneering work of Ceder and collaborators at MIT in the area of cathode materials for Liion batteries. 4 Despite the growing number of applications of combinatorial techniques to the study of systems of electrochemical relevance, 5,6 including electrocatalysis, 7-10 energy storage, [11][12][13][14][15][16] and photoelectrocatalysis, 17,18 the only contribution that describes the use of an automated liquid dispensing system involving non-aqueous solvents is that of Su et al, 19 who examined the properties of 2,5-di-tertbutyl-1,4-bis(2-methoxyethoxy)benzene (DBBB), a redox active material displaying promising attributes for non-aqueous flow batteries. 19 This contribution describes a unique instrument capable of producing large numbers of non-aqueous electrolyte mixtures involving the most common solvents either currently in use or being considered by the Li-ion battery industry.…”

Implementation of a phenomenological evaporation model into a porous network simulation for water management in low temperature fuel cells

“…ion. This is why this component is sometimes referred to as the ionomer [1][2][3][4] . The chemical composition of the membrane portion of the PEM fuel cell has a base chain of hydrophobic PTFE (polytetrafluoroethelyne) with hydrophilic side chains.…”