Highly Conductive Polymer Electrolyte Impregnated 3d Li-Metal Negative Electrode

NASA is unique to the government in the fact that its mission takes it into a celestial operating environment that is inherently difficult to navigate. This environment is extremely hazardous, contains a variety of reactive oxidants, highly energetic radiation, rapidly moving debris and the like. This places stringent requirements on all components NASA chooses for its missions, and these components govern or limit the extent to which NASA can operate in such an environment. A secondary battery with a net energy density greater than 500 Wh/kg and stable performance past 500 cycles would significantly extend NASA's mission capability. Given design constraints, an energy dense battery would be smaller and allow for the deployment of larger, more complex sensors. More importantly, the use of a strong solid electrolyte would significantly increase the safety of the battery, allowing it to be deployed as a critical component. Should the battery fail, the solid polymer would help prevent damage to other equipment and reduce potential for personal injury. NASA is currently planning on deploying lithium ion batteries onto the ISS to replace its aging nickel-hydrogen cells (Clark 2013). The Hubble telescope also uses nickel-hydrogen cells. Li-ion batteries w/ 500 Wh/kg would increase lifetime, which would result in significant cost savings to due a reduction in space walks. Such a cell would also reduce operational risk when deployed on probes, rovers and the like.

There are many potential markets where XABC can have an impact, which include consumer electronics, server farms, power tools, grid backup, military, medical, robotics and others. From a value perspective, XABC will try to satisfy as many of those markets as practical during product design decisions. XABC cannot focus on all markets initially, so it will create products for markets that stand to benefit most from StructurePore™ technology. Considering this, XABC will focus on applications of high desirability in three of the many potential market segments: 1) Military, DoD and NASA applications where enhanced performance at a much lower weight is highly desirable. 2) Portable electronic devices especially in the rapidly growing mobility market for laptops, netbooks, tablets and phones. 3) Automotive application for electric, gasoline hybrid, and fuel cell hybrid vehicles. Many secondary battery applications, like PHEVs, consumer electronics and NASA, are very sensitive to safety and reliability. To enter into such markets with a secondary lithium metal battery, the product must first be refined and adopted by markets that have more inherent risk tolerance, like the DoD, robotics and hobby markets. XABC is working with leading members of the remote control vehicle market to supply them with high power, high-energy batteries. XABC would work in tandem with NASA during the development of its commercial cells to optimize the design of its commercial cell to NASA's needs. More »