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ENERGY STORAGE

June 2022 ESRFnews

Blanchard believes this suits industry well, as companies on the whole want answers quickly and for contractual reasons of non-disclosure prefer to have a single point of contact to follow the whole characterisation workflow. Another company that has benefited from the project

so far is Centro Ricerche FIAT (CRF) in Italy. Among tools provided by others in the TEESMAT project, hard X-ray scattering at the ESRF s ID31 beamline helped the company develop a physical model to simulate the behaviour and lifetimes of commercial lithium-ion cells. Meanwhile, ESRF nanotomography and hard X-ray scattering, again at the ID16B and ID31 beamlines, has helped to characterise the morphological and mechani- cal processes going on in a promising range of hybrid energy-storage devices, based on both lithium-ion cells and supercapacitors. We lacked information about degradation processes in those systems at various stages of operation, says Yurii Maletin, director of research and development at the Ukraine-based company Yunasko. Now, due to combination of powerful research techniques available in the TEESMAT consortium, we have had a chance to get a really deep understanding of degradation processes and, hence, a chance to further improve our technology. The purpose of the pilot phase of TEESMAT, says

Blanchard, was to establish an efficient workflow and see whether the service partners could respond quickly enough to industrial needs. Come August, however, the test bed will enter a commercial phase, where companies have to pay for the services they use. They do not have to share their results, but if they do, they will gain access to an ever-growing database in which such battery results are stored. Blanchard hopes that this motivation will be sufficient to make the novel scheme a success. Until then, the TEESMAT partners can be satisfied

with the industrial testimonies they have received so far. We ve come out rich and proud to be part of this European adventure, says Dhuiège. n

Jon Cartwright

service providers to pool their resources in such a way as to be more easily accessible to industry. Coordinated by the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), and developed with more than 10 commercial partners, the open innovation test bed for electrochemical energy storage materials (TEESMAT) is completing its pilot phase this summer, and already has a number of success stories. It s been a real pleasure to work in the TEESMAT project, says Benjamin Dhuiège, head of research and development at the France-based electronics company GenesInk. It s been an opportunity for us to work within a consortium of experts in deep and advanced characterisation to meet our industrial needs, and to understand how our technology can be more innovative and robust.

Flexible working GenesInk s speciality is the development of printed, flexi- ble batteries for next-generation consumer electronics a technology that requires polymer substrates to be metal- lised with copper. But copper can oxidise during storage and processing, eroding its performance. To understand this problem, Dhuiège and colleagues first made use of Semilab, an electrical characterisation company and TEESMAT partner in Hungary, to assess the resistance (and likely oxidation level) of its coated and deposited copper layers, before taking samples to the ESRF. Here, nanotomography at the ID16B beamline and hard X-ray scattering at the ID01 beamline revealed the layers morphologies and compositions. The results allowed the scientists to improve their manufacturing process, to make the copper layers more reliable and with a lower environmental impact. Not all non-commercial TEESMAT partners are

pure instrumentation providers. For instance, SERMA Technologies in Grenoble, France, is partly a consult- ancy, listening to what a commercial client is struggling with and directing them swiftly to the best solution, be that at the ESRF or another TEESMAT partner. (The ESRF is the only synchrotron light source in the project.)

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t The next generation of flexible electronics needs flexible batteries, such as those by GenesInk. TEESMAT has helped the company improve its manufacturing process.

s CRF, a research centre belonging to the Fiat motor group, has participated in the open-innovation test bed to simulate the behaviour of lithium-ion batteries, such as those found in the electric Fiat New 500 supermini.

FI AT

ESRF beamlines have helped characterise a promising range of hybrid energy-storage devices, based on both lithium-ion cells and super- capacitors