SPICE Battery Powder Coating Project

SPICE Battery Powder Coating Project

PSI successfully concludes £3.3M SPICE battery powder coating project for electrical vehicles – 24/08/2021

To enhance electric vehicle (EV) performance and reduce range anxiety, the SPICE (Silicon Product Improvement through Coating Enhancement) project has developed silicon anode battery materials. Through coating the advanced powder anode materials, expensive electrolyte formulations can be avoided enabling high-performance low-cost silicon-based battery cells.

During this project PSI drew on past system build, process design, fluidised bed reactor (FBR) as well as chemical vapour deposition (CVD) experience to deliver from initial concept to a fully built and tested FBR CVD machine. With this new in-house coating machine PSI coated powders in bulk in kilogram quantities. This paves the way to future industrialised scaled-up production of advanced coated powders to meet the rapidly growing demand for electric EV batteries.

In addition to PSI, the consortium partners included project lead and battery material specialist Nexeon, sole commercial UK cell manufacturer AMTE Power (formerly AGM Batteries) and Oxford University’s Department of Materials providing advanced powder characterisation techniques.

Funding for this work was provided through the Faraday Battery Challenge (as part of the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund) and delivered though Innovate UK.