Accelerating battery research with robots

The world urgently needs new types of energy storage. Developing completely new concepts for batteries and exploring their potential is currently a lengthy process, however, as Corsin Battaglia, head of Empa's "Materials for Energy Conversion" laboratory in Dübendorf and professor at ETH Zurich, points out "Our goal is to accelerate this process," says Battaglia. This acceleration is currently manifesting itself in the form of the "Aurora" robot platform, which is to take over the fully automated and, in the future, autonomous selection of materials, assembly and analysis of battery cells in the laboratory. As part of the European "Materials Acceleration Platform" being set up within the European "Battery2030+" project "BIG-MAP", the current development processes are to be around ten times faster.

For internationally competitive battery research and development, time-consuming and error-prone steps in the innovation process are now being automated using "Aurora". The robot platform is currently being further developed in Empa's laboratories together with the company Chemspeed Technologies AG. Currently, Empa researcher Enea Svaluto-Ferro is implementing the work steps and "training" Aurora. "While the robot weighs, dispenses and assembles individual cell components with consistent precision, accurately initiates and completes charging cycles or performs other repetitive steps, researchers can continue to drive the innovation process based on the data generated," says Svaluto-Ferro.

Smart, autonomous and chemistry-agnostic

In the future, however, "Aurora" will also learn to work autonomously. Using machine learning, the "Aurora" AI could thus create mathematical models and decide which experiments to perform in the next step and which materials and components are particularly promising candidates for the desired battery application. This is because the search is currently on worldwide for new battery materials that are inexpensive, readily available and do not entail any technical disadvantages.

Since the platform can be used independently of materials, battery chemistry and generation, it could therefore be used not only to research lithium-ion batteries, but also to test alternative sodium-ion batteries or batteries with a self-healing mechanism in the future, says Svaluto-Ferro." "With the chemistry-agnostic 'Aurora,' we can also bring prototypes from our labs, such as saltwater batteries or solid-state batteries, to market more efficiently and quickly," says lab director Battaglia.

"Aurora" is not alone in this. The robotic platform is embedded in the ETH Board's "Open Research Data" initiative, which aims to advance digitization in research and make data freely available to the scientific community. Among other things, "AiiDA", an "open source workflow management" system developed as part of the National Center of Competence in Research MARVEL, is used. For the communication between the "Aurora" AI and the "AiiDA" platform, Empa researchers are currently developing the appropriate software in collaboration with researchers at EPFL and PSI. This makes "Aurora" the first robot platform to be coupled to the existing "AiiDA" system. Data is finally transferred to the data management system openBIS, which is being developed at ETH Zurich.

For battery research, this means that the various process steps through which the many battery cells pass are efficiently monitored and evaluated, and data can be traced back to their origin at any time. "This accelerates innovation processes enormously and provides "Industry 4.0" with a comprehensive digitization strategy in the area of research and development," says Empa researcher Corsin Battaglia.

Swiss Battery Days 2023

From September 18-20, 2023, PSI, Empa and iBAT will organize the "Swiss Battery Days" for the fifth time. Researchers from Germany and abroad will present their latest results in the fields of synthesis and characterization of battery materials and the production and analysis of battery electrodes and cells, including the researchers of the Aurora project.

EU invests 150 million euros in sustainable batteries

Battery 2030+ is a European research initiative dedicated to developing the batteries of the future. Its focus is on environmentally friendly, high-performance and long-lasting batteries, which are important for the transition to a climate-neutral society.

As part of the EU's Horizon Europe research program, the EU recently awarded over 150 million euros to research projects coordinated by Battery 2030+. Battery 2030+ aims to make Europe the world leader in the development and manufacture of environmentally friendly batteries.