A few days ago, the report of Jeff Dahn's research progress was published for a new cell based on NMC chemistry, consisting of layers of nickel, manganese and cobalt, and offering a high energy capacity, and high security thanks to use of a solid electrolyte. These cells may be able to power an electric vehicle for more than 1.6 million kilometers (1 million miles) and reach at least two decades of life if they are installed in energy storage systems in the network.
Now, Tesla has applied for a new patent in which Jeff Dahn and his team appear as inventors of a new battery cell that is not the result of this investigation, but of a previous one, which was already the subject of a patent in February, and which is very different in terms of composition chemistry to the one presented in this last previous report.
According to the patent itself, the positive electrodes or anodes NMC 532 (50% nickel, 30% manganese and 20% cobalt) are monocrystalline, particularly thanks to their larger grain size compared to other more standardized NMC chemicals, monocrystalline, whose size Grain is much smaller. "The new battery cell uses two additives in the electrolyte, vinyl carbonate (VC) and 1,2,6-oxoditian-2,2,6,6-tetraoxide that increase cell performance." More technically, the patent shows how additives have shown an increase in performance, while other research has focused on a combination of many more additives that makes it difficult to understand how they work together chemically.
Jeff Dahn and his team at Dalhousie University appear as inventors of the new Tesla cells.
At the cathode, Tesla uses NCA technology for electric cars and NCM for stationary systems. However, the new patent mentions that the technology will be useful both for electric vehicles as for network storage.
Additives
Several investigationsthey show how electrolytic additives Increase battery life and performance. In a publication of Journal of the Electrochemical Society From 2013 it was shown that five patented additives, of which the chemical composition was not revealed, were able to increase the life of the cells compared to an electrolyte system without additives or with only one.
Other studies have focused on the performance gain of electrolyte systems that contain three or four additives. However, in all of them, researchers do not fully understand the interaction between the different additives that allow them to work together adding synergies with specific electrodes.
According to Tesla in his patent, "the composition of the additive mixtures of certain systems is often based on trial and error and cannot be predicted beforehand."
Tesla's solution
Jeff Dahn and his team have used only two additives, which reduces the cost and complexity and makes it possible to predict and control its impact on the properties of the cell, "reducing costs, improving performance and extending battery life."
These battery systems with less operational additives can be used in different energy storage applications in both vehicles and networks. In parallel, they have developed positive and negative electrodes that work more efficiently with the two additive electrolyte, providing additional systematic improvements. "The patent application is called" New battery systems based on two additive electrolyte systems that include 1,2,6-oxoditian-2,2,6, 6-tetraoxide ".
Tesla's R&D investment responds to its increasingly palpable intention to build your own battery cell manufacturing line, regardless of the intervention of Panasonic. In this case, the new Tesla patents, which do not necessarily have to become industrialized, respond to two different types of cells, but in both cases, the current ones that occur in the Nevada Gigafactory improve.
