Empa and the SeNSE project, from raw material to the battery

A large number of major research projects are supporting the battery and automotive industry in developing the batteries of the future: one of these, a Horizon 2020 project called SeNSE, came to a successful conclusion in early 2024.

The four-year EU project with an overall budget of more than 10 million euro was initiated and led by researchers from Empa’s Materials for Energy Conversion laboratory. At the time of the call for proposals, the relatively new laboratory was barely known in the field of battery research. Laboratory head Corsin Battaglia knew that in order to be part of a European battery project, he and his team would have to launch one themselves. And this they did: Battaglia and his colleague Ruben-Simon Kühnel were able to persuade institutions and industrial companies from around the world to join them, and together, they secured the funding.

The aim of SeNSE was both pragmatic and ambitious. At the end of the project, the developed materials and technologies should be as close as possible to industrial-scale production, and therefore to being used in electric cars. “We are also researching battery technologies that are potentially worlds better than lithium-ion batteries – more sustainable, safer and with a higher energy density,” says Battaglia. “But it will still be a few years before they can be produced industrially. In SeNSE, we wanted to develop technologies that can be installed in market-ready electric cars within a few years.”

To achieve this, the teams involved worked through almost the entire battery production value chain in just four years: from developing new materials and scaling them up to installing them in battery cells. The pouch cells, which are roughly the size of a smartphone, were manufactured by the Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT). FPT Motorenforschung AG, the Innovation center of FPT Industrial brand, belonging to Iveco Group, was then able to install the cells in a ready-to-use module like the ones used in electric vehicles – including the associated electronics and software.

The SeNSE module has several improvements over today’s batteries: a higher energy density and a more favorable environmental balance, fast-charging capability and increased fire safety – and, of course, cost-effectiveness. All core components of the battery were further developed in the project. The cathode contains only half as much of the critical raw material cobalt as today’s batteries. In the anode, the collaborators were able to replace some of the graphite – also classified as critical precisely because of battery production – with silicon, one of the most common elements in the Earth’s crust.

In order to further improve the fast-charging capability, Coventry University and FPT Motorenforschung AG also developed a sophisticated temperature management system for the pilot module. Sensors embedded directly in the cells monitor the temperature inside the battery in real time. A specially developed algorithm can then charge the cell just quickly enough to prevent damage from overheating.

Battaglia and Kühnel see the scalability and the direct transfer to industry as the project’s greatest successes. The industrial teams have already been able to register several patents for the new developments resulting from SeNSE, build pilot plants and secure financing, as well as incorporate their new knowledge into other battery technologies. The chemical company Huntsman has already launched the conductive additive which was used in the SeNSE electrodes on the market, where it is now available to battery manufacturers.