Over the past 2 years we have been working in collaboration with Dr Emiliano Bilotti and Prof. Mike Reece at Queen Mary University of London to develop advanced polymer dielectric materials. This knowledge and expertise will be brought in house over the next 3 years via a Knowledge Transfer Partnership (#11296) as we seek develop a polymer film capacitor manufacturing capability, aiming for a packaged energy density of 5 Jcm-3, or ten times greater than the market leading materials.
We are working jointly with Prof. Andrew Hector at the University of Southampton to develop a high energy density, high cyclability sodium-ion battery anode material. The unique composite material combines the advantages of two different electrochemical processes while negating the problems associated with each. This work has been part funded by Innovate UK under the Faraday Battery Challenge project #133370.
Prof. Steve Dunn is Head of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering at LSBU and is collaborating with the materials team under Faraday Battery Challenge project #133720. Steve is developing novel electrolytes for DG Innovate’s supercapacitor electrode materials. These promise to move away from the toxic and flammable incumbent acetonitrile based electrolytes, while exploring opportunity to increase the operating voltage and realise significant increase in energy density.
The materials team are working in close collaboration with NPL fellow and Science Area Leader Dr. Gareth Hinds to develop in-operando Raman and X-ray diffraction spectroscopy capabilities at NPL. These measurements afford DG Innovate the opportunity to elucidate the chemical processes occurring in our electrode materials, as they are cycled, lifting the fog of empirical analysis and greatly accelerating DG Innovate’s materials discovery programs.
Profesor Titular Héctor Beltrán-Mir and PhD student Maria Fortuño Morte have been assisting DG Innovate by developing novel metal oxide coating processes for forming core/shell nanoparticles, on a range of functional core materials.
Prof. Judith Driscoll has worked with DG Innovate for several years as together we seek opportunities to commercially exploit her ground breaking functional oxide thin films. These promise to enable the next generation of electronic components, facilitating progression towards and all-electric future.
Senior Project Manager at Advanced Services and Products, Dr Kevin Green is leading the manufacture of large 10kF supercapacitor pouch cells using our own supercapacitor material, synthesised under a secret recipe.
Professor Zi-Qiang Zhu and his team will work on the design optimisation of multi-phase synchronous permanent magnet machines. This is based on Finite Element (FE) optimisation to determine the most appropriate machine topology. Their work will focus on the design for maximum: torque density, power density and efficiency while minimising cost through novel stator/rotor material use and design.
