Deakin researchers, in collaboration with technology company Calix, are making swift progress towards producing cheaper, more efficient, environmentally-sound batteries right here in Australia.
The team has achieved a breakthrough in producing high-performance battery electrode materials, addressing a critical gap in Australian battery production.
By improving the performance of abundant and affordable minerals, initially lithium and manganese, they aim to halve the current cost of battery electrode production – one of the costliest parts of the battery.
This partnership with Calix, a multi-award-winning technology development company, marks a significant step towards establishing Australian battery production on a global scale.
Batteries are expensive, volatile and often toxic. But thanks to a Deakin team and their collaboration with Calix, producing safer, Australian-made batteries at half the current cost is becoming a reality.
Batteries contain three key components: a cathode, an anode and an electrolyte. This research focuses on enhancing the cathode and electrolyte to create safer, more powerful, easier-to-recharge and eco-friendly batteries.
Traditionally, Australia has exported its minerals as raw materials, losing the high-value-added benefits. Calix’s innovative ‘Flash Calcining’ technology changes that. By rapidly creating high surface area materials resembling mineral honeycomb, the process eliminates the need for export while enhancing battery performance.
Researchers at Deakin’s Battery Research and Innovation Hub have demonstrated that their in-house lithium manganese oxide (LMO) materials perform at very high rates. Through a joint project, they showed that Calix’s innovative production process further enhances these materials, resulting in battery cathodes with outstanding charge-holding and recharging capabilities. Impressively, the improved cathodes match or exceed the performance of commercial alternatives, and the Calix process is both faster and more cost-effective than traditional methods.
This research is anchored at Deakin’s Battery Research and Innovation Hub, a world-class facility focused on advanced battery prototyping and energy storage commercialisation. It plays a key role in developing next-generation battery technologies in Australia.
Ionic liquids are playing a key role in advancing next-generation battery technology, particularly for lithium metal and high-voltage battery cells. The third partner in this project, Australian specialty chemical and polymer manufacturer Boron Molecular, is utilising its expertise in chemical synthesis to develop enhanced electrolytes, building on Deakin's pioneering research into ionic liquid electrolytes.
These electrolytes are known for their exceptional ability to handle high temperatures while being safer, non-volatile and less toxic than traditional alternatives.
Focusing on minerals that are more abundant, accessible and affordable, these batteries will have several environmental benefits. As well as protecting precious resources, they will aid the transition to electric vehicles and reduce CO2 emissions by hastening the replacement of petrol and diesel-powered vehicles. Fossil-fuel powered scooters are a dominant source of pollution in many cities, contributing to health-related effects from poor air quality, greenhouse gas emissions and Climate Change.
The immediate end goal is a cheap LMO-based battery that works well at the smaller scale, initially for use in electric scooters – a huge market in Asia – as well as small cars and power tools, amongst other applications. The potential international markets are enormous.
And the research is progressing at speed, Calix’s unique $2.7m electrically-powered BATMn reactor at Bacchus Marsh, the first of it's kind in Australia, was launched in 2019 to produce battery electrode materials. The reactor is a key provider of novel materials for the ARC Training Centre for Future Energy Storage Technologies.
Despite having a shorter range and requiring more frequent charging, these new batteries will have a very fast charging time of about 15 minutes, compared to the 6-12 hours of batteries in current electric vehicles.
The Battery Research and Innovation Hub’s cutting-edge prototyping facility is being used to produce pouch cell batteries, optimise their performance and provide batteries for trials with global customers.
Professor Maria Forsyth
Deakin Distinguished Professor, Institute for Frontier Materials
This project is already making waves internationally. UK-based battery manufacturer AMTE Power has partnered with Calix and Deakin to produce a 3kWh demonstration scooter battery pack using Calix LMO cathode powders fine-tuned by the Deakin team. This pack will validate the Calix process and highlight its scalability for global markets.
The next phase of the research will focus on developing other electrode materials, such as NMC cathodes, with plans to patent these processes. Discussions with potential manufacturers in Victoria are already underway, and commercial-scale battery production is expected to begin in Australia within five years, supported by Deakin’s pioneering research.
This project is backed by the Cooperative Research Centre Projects (CRC-P) program, with $9.4 million in funding announced in 2019. The Advanced Hybrid Batteries project brings together expertise from Calix, Deakin University’s Institute for Frontier Materials, the Battery Research and Innovation Hub and Boron Molecular Pty Ltd to advance Australia’s battery manufacturing capabilities.
