On November 28, around 60 participants gathered in Uppsala to discuss the possibilities with graphene in batteries.
The workshop was arranged by the national innovation program SIO Grafen in collaboration with Uppsala University and Battery 2030+ to spread knowledge about the state of the art of graphene battery research and innovation, and to discuss future possibilities for collaboration.
Vittorio Pellegrini, Professor at Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia and head of the European Graphene Flagship, opened the event with a presentation about what impact graphene can have on future batteries.
“I believe the most promising aspect from the point of view of industrial application, is the ability to make composites with silicone and graphene. They may push the capacity of lithium-ion batteries beyond what has been reached today with other carbon additives”.
Kristina Edström, Professor at Uppsala University and Coordinator of BATTERY 2030+, presented battery research at Uppsala University and the BATTERY 2030+ initiative.
“BATTERY 2030+ is a long-term research initiative with the goal to invent the batteries of the future and provide breakthrough technologies to the European battery industry across the full value chain. And can graphene help with this? The material has shown to be really difficult to handle, which means it is fantastic for a scientist.”
She was followed by Carmen Cavallo, researcher at Chalmers University of Technology, who presented Graphene-based electrodes for next-generation batteries.
The afternoon session started with presentations by the companies Graphmatech, Northvolt and 2F fab, followed by a discussion about what it takes to scale up the use of graphene in batteries.
the Department of Chemistry,
Uppsala University.
– The critical aspect is to bring down the price of graphene and the environmental impact of the production process. The low cost is otherwise a good argument for many of the next generation of battery materials. But if the price of the cell becomes higher due to expensive additives, not much is gained, says Daniel Brandell, Professor at the Department of Chemistry, Uppsala University.
At the same time, the reproducibility of graphene must be greater and the material more well defined.
– At present there is a big difference between graphene and graphene, which makes it problematic to determine the battery performance. Still, much of the graphene development is going in the right direction, which means we can expect more and better implementations in different types of batteries going forward, he adds.