The Role of Pilot Lines in Bridging the Gap Between Fundamental Research and Industrial Production for Lithium-Ion Battery Cells Relevant to Sustainable Electromobility: A Review

Despite intensive research activities on lithium-ion technology, particularly in the past five decades, the technological background for automotive lithium-ion battery mass production in Europe is rather young and not yet ready to meet requirements of automobile manufacturers. In light of the strong increase in electromobility, bridging this gap between fundamental research and industrial production is mandatory to keep the value chain of automobile manufacture in European countries. Challenges in know-how transfer from lab scale to industry scale arise from different product configurations and objectives. Lab scale focuses primarily on material development and screening, utilizes small-sized half-cell or single-layered designs with one-side-coated electrodes, and applies manually operated, discontinuous equipment, whereas industry focuses on optimized trade-offs between throughput, quality, and costs. Market-relevant cells contain usually double-side-coated electrodes with comparatively higher areal capacities, assembled into multilayered configurations. Mass production is conducted through automated, continuous processes including roll-to-roll manufacturing and consecutive pick-and-place operations. Inevitably, standard laboratory conditions do not allow for prediction of either optimized mass-production process parameters nor physicochemical characteristics of final products. Hence, this Review aims to identify challenges in transferring lab-scale results to industry with special focus on pilot lines as intermediate step between the different technological levels.

Automated summary

Despite extensive research on lithium-ion technology, the technological background for mass production of automotive lithium-ion batteries in Europe is young and not yet prepared to meet the demands of car manufacturers. Bridging the gap between fundamental research and industrial production is necessary to sustain the automobile manufacturing value chain in European countries, especially with the increasing popularity of electromobility. Challenges in knowledge transfer from lab scale to industry scale arise from differences in product configurations and objectives.