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The world is facing a key challenge: the increasing demand for energy, particularly through electromobility, requires more powerful and sustainable energy storage systems and a growing share of renewable energies.
Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) play a key role here, but their further development is hampered by limited resources, environmental pollution and technical limitations of existing materials. The dependence on critical raw materials such as natural graphite and cobalt not only poses a supply risk, but also raises ethical and environmental issues. At the same time, conventional carbon-based anodes are reaching their capacity limits, requiring new material concepts to meet the increasing demands for energy storage.
The MoSiLIB research project led by AIT is addressing precisely this issue and developing an innovative composite anode based on silicon and tin sulphide (SnS2). The aim is to avoid the disadvantages of previous anode materials, reduce the use of critical raw materials and at the same time significantly improve battery performance and cycle stability. A particular focus is on the use of high-purity silicon, which is recycled from disused solar modules. This contributes to the conservation of resources and sustainability.
The chemical interaction of SnS2 with silicon creates Si/Li2S and Sn/Li2S heterostructures that buffer the volume expansion of the anode particles and reduce agglomeration during charging cycles. This increases the service life of the battery, which makes the composite anode particularly suitable for generation 3b LIBs with LNMO cathodes. In addition, the project relies on environmentally friendly, water-based processing methods and scales the technology to a semi-industrial level to ensure feasibility and industrial applicability.
Project goals and methods
The main objective of MoSiLIB is to develop a Si (graphite)-SnS2 composite anode that achieves a reversible capacity of 800 mAh/g over more than 1000 cycles. A novel material processing method based on a combination of spray drying and high-energy ball milling is used for this purpose. The resulting anode materials are tested in complete high-voltage cells with LNMO cathodes.
In addition to experimental research, the project relies on multi-scale modelling to optimise the performance of the anode materials and to understand ageing mechanisms in detail. In addition to material development, another focus is on the semi-industrial scaling of the synthesis processes and water-based electrode production to ensure sustainable and economical production. The newly developed anode materials will be extensively tested in button and pouch cells, including multilayer pouch cells, to validate their long-term performance and scalability.
Contribution of the AIT Austrian Institute of Technology
The AIT plays a central role in MoSiLIB. In addition to project management and coordination, AIT is focussing in particular on electrochemical investigations of SnS2 anodes and LNMO cathodes. The aim is to evaluate their performance and long-term stability under real operating conditions.
Another focus of the AIT is the development and optimisation of processing methods for electrodes on a pilot scale. Using state-of-the-art pilot plants, the scalability of the processes is being investigated and further developed in order to enable the most sustainable and economical production of silicon-tin sulphide composite anodes.
"With MoSiLIB, we are taking a decisive step towards sustainable and high-performance lithium-ion batteries. By combining innovative materials and environmentally friendly manufacturing processes, we can not only improve the efficiency of batteries, but also reduce their ecological impact. This is a significant contribution to the energy storage of the future and the further development of electromobility," explains AIT researcher Damian Cupid, who is leading the project.
Project consortium
AIT Austrian Institute of Technology (coordination)
University of Vienna
AVL List GmbH
Frimeco Produktions GmbH
University of Liège / Greenmat
University of Ljubljana
The project is funded by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG).