Lithium Battery Engineering (LBE) has been working with CHASM Advanced Materials on evaluation of a graphite anode material with carbon nano-tubes (CNTs) grown on the surface to give an entirely new structure. Such an anode could look like packed sea urchins with CNTs providing higher surface area, better electrical connection and better spacing for electrolyte. Preliminary testing by LBE using a proprietary binder resulted in a breakthrough carbon anode that can be charged at -30oC and cycles at -30oC at 50% of ambient capacity. LBE proposes to work with Chasm to optimize CNT coverage and length. In contract work on supercapacitors, LBE discovered a method of creating a superior passivation layer on the aluminum current collectors which allows supercapacitors to operate at 4.5V. LBE proposes to evaluate this new passivation layer for lithium ion anodes. If successful, this would significantly reduce the weight as copper foil represents the second heaviest component in a lithium ion cell. This increases the specific energy of the cell 10-15% independent of any other changes. LBE has studied the problem of electrolyte pooling under high-G gun launch and proposes a cell structural and component design using their proprietary incompressible ceramic separator to prevent this problem.
