Developing powerful batteries without critical raw materials.

For the energy and mobility transition to succeed, we need a large amount of electrochemical energy storage. However, current lithium-ion batteries are manufactured using relatively unavailable and sometimes critical raw materials such as cobalt, nickel, natural graphite, copper, and of course, lithium. In order to make our future sustainable, it is necessary to do without such raw materials wherever we can, or to use them in a way that keeps them in a closed recycling loop.

We are therefore researching post-lithium battery systems that require no critical raw materials or environmentally harmful processes. For battery systems that are better for recycling, we need to rethink and redevelop currently used materials, manufacturing processes, and cell designs as a whole. We also need to find efficient recycling solutions that allow us to recover used raw materials simply, sustainably, and completely in the sense of a circular economy.

(Header: KIT/Tanja Meißner)