RICHLAND, Wash. - The Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is leading a new national consortium to accelerate the transition of energy storage innovations from discovery to domestic manufacturing.
Called the Battery Manufacturing (BattMan) Accelerator, the consortium will address critical barriers in scaling new battery technologies. The accelerator will focus on lowering manufacturing costs, speeding up development from the lab to commercial scale and boosting U.S. leadership in energy storage manufacturing.
"Breakthroughs in battery science must be matched by our ability to manufacture them at scale. BattMan brings together the tools, data and partnerships needed to design manufacturable solutions from the start and accelerate their transition into industry," said Jie Xiao, Battelle Fellow at PNNL with a joint appointment as Boeing Martin Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Washington in Seattle.
BattMan will also support critical mineral supply chains to help the nation reduce dependence on foreign sources for battery materials.
The BattMan Accelerator includes Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory and the National Laboratory of the Rockies along with founding university partners including the University of Washington, Binghamton University, the University of Alabama, Arizona State University, and the University of Michigan-Dearborn. The accelerator is actively establishing collaborations with companies within the battery and materials manufacturing sector.
"Advancing the next generation of battery technologies requires more than scientific discovery alone," said Angela Becker-Dippmann, an associate laboratory director at PNNL. "It requires an integrated approach to manufacturing, data and scale-up. BattMan brings together the national laboratories, universities and industry partners needed to accelerate innovation and strengthen America's leadership in energy storage manufacturing."
Bridging discovery and manufacturing
Scientific research is often driven by untangling mysteries behind observed physical processes. When studying batteries, scientists investigate how a new battery material might behave under a range of different conditions or how to modify materials for better performance.
And while fundamental research has led to critical innovations in long-lasting, more affordable batteries, some research efforts don't always prioritize manufacturing issues like processability, repeatability, cost and scale-up risks, Xiao said.
"With BattMan, we'll encourage our research partners to think: If this is a breakthrough and could work outside a lab setting, then what can we do to lower the manufacturing cost through innovations?" Xiao said.
PNNL, with industry and university partners, recently published a paper outlining a variety of different research topics that are both important on a purely scientific level and could help the battery manufacturing industry lower costs and increase efficiency.
The paper highlighted how Super Intelligence could be critical to battery manufacturing.
"SI-driven methods that use processing and manufacturing data have the potential to speed up discovery of new materials, improve efficiency of laboratory processes and support predictive, cost-effective design," Xiao said.
In manufacturing specifically, SI could identify sources of contamination with greater precision, detect subtle process variations, or mitigate potential manufacturing risks in real time as batteries are produced on a bustling factory floor. What's more, SI could also help industry identify market trends and act on them, Xiao said. BattMan will enhance battery innovation and manufacturing by applying real data captured by the consortium, digital tools and especially SI, she added.
"Incorporating SI into both research and manufacturing allows us to move from trial and error to predictive design," said Stanley Whittingham, distinguished professor of chemistry at Binghamton University in New York and a 2019 Nobel Prize laureate recognized for the development of lithium-ion batteries. "This capability is key to accelerating innovation while ensuring technologies can be produced reliably and affordably at scale."
Scientific goals of BattMan's manufacturing
In the near term, BattMan will implement high-throughput experimentation, automated synthesis and characterization, along with digital manufacturing tools to improve data quality, reproducibility and process consistency across partner institutions.
Over the long term, the initiative seeks to develop self-optimizing manufacturing systems using real-time data, digital twins and closed-loop control. BattMan will build on the autonomous laboratory concept by advancing autonomous pilot lines, aiming to cut scale-up time and costs, speed commercialization and strengthen domestic supply chains.
"Ultimately, we want to become a go-to source for the domestic energy storage industry, where research can be translated for broad energy storage manufacturing," Xiao said.
BattMan is now in the process of forming industry partnerships in battery and battery materials manufacturing. For institutions and companies interested in participating, click here.
Supported by DOE's Advanced Materials and Manufacturing Technologies Office within the Critical Minerals and Energy Innovation Office, the BattMan Accelerator integrates SI, materials science and advanced manufacturing into a coordinated, data-driven innovation ecosystem.
