Architecting Energy Storage Materials with Additive Manufacturing

Printing and patterning functional materials are critical to advancing emerging technologies in energy storage. Batteries in particular are a crucial part of enabling technologies ranging from wearable devices for the Internet-of-Things to better electric vehicles for a carbon-neutral economy. Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) specifically have high energy and high power densities which are important for current and future energy storage applications. Traditional LIBs are made with planar electrodes wherein their performance can be optimized for energy or power, but not both simultaneously. Three-dimensional (3D) electrodes have been proposed as a solution to mitigate these energy and power trade-offs by engineering ion transport in battery electrodes. However, creating 3D electrodes over large areas with the features needed for optimal transport remains a challenge. This talk will highlight new additive manufacturing approaches being developed in our research group to enable customizable and scalable fabrication of 3D LIB electrodes. Electrode design principles, printable ink formulations, and a new additive manufacturing process based on acoustic focusing to control and align particles on a micron-scale at high speeds will be presented. In addition, initial research on manufacturing considerations for direct incorporation of batteries into 3D objects will be discussed.