Altech Chemicals Ltd (ASX:ATC) has expanded its research and development laboratories in Perth, paving the way for pouch cell battery production.
The specialty battery materials company plans to make the scaled-up cells for high-power applications, opening it up to market opportunities across the consumer, military and automotive sectors.
Before it looks at commercial opportunities, however, Altech plans to conduct in-depth test-work, evaluating the pouch cells’ performance on an electrochemical level.
Down the line, the facility expansion will add capacity to create full-sized pouch cells and scale up the company’s anode material production with another tube furnace.
The kind of equipment needed to make pouch cell batteries.
The story so far
In November last year, Altech announced a major breakthrough: it created a lithium-ion battery with 30% more energy capacity than a conventional graphite-only lithium-ion battery.
How did they do it? Essentially, the Altech team was able to incorporate alumina-coated silicon into the graphite anode of lithium-ion batteries, leading to higher energy capacity and increased cyclability.
To complete its tests, Altech turned to one particular battery type: industry standard, rechargeable lithium-ion coin cells.
And while these kinds of batteries provide a very useful comparison at the early research stage, they do have limitations because of their design and construction.
As such, when developing new active material for lithium-ion batteries, the cell chemistry is optimised in the smaller format coin cells before it’s scaled up to full-sized pouch cells — the kind Altech is readying to produce.
What is a pouch cell?
Pouch cells are a common lithium-ion battery design. They come in a vacuum-packed plate shape that hosts many layers of thin cathode and anode electrodes.
Conductive foil tabs, which are welded to the electrode and sealed to the pouch, carry the positive and negative terminals to the outside.
Thanks to their size and design, pouch cell battery packs are popular in consumer, military and automotive applications.
The sheer size of that market gives Altech impetus to make its own pouch cell production and testing facility.
Among other things, an in-house operation means the company can test electrical abuse scenarios, wherein a battery cell is required to operate outside nominal voltage and current limitations.
They can also evaluate how the cells perform in other scenarios, such as temperature extremes or mechanical deformation.