NanoKTN Announces Battery Manufacture Workshop

This workshop is a must-attend event for all end-users, manufacturers and technology providers interested in learning more about the use of nanotechnology in battery manufacture and energy storage, and will announce details of relevant funding calls from both the Department of Energy & Climate Change and the Technology Strategy Board.

Nanotechnology has an important contribution to make in the future manufacture of batteries, which are a fundamental component of portable electronic devices, electric vehicles and hybrids, local energy storage of renewable energy and medical devices to name but a few applications. Enhanced battery performance, sustainability and reduced costs are targets sought in all market applications, but to realise this potential, the scale-up and manufacturing processes need to be developed to address the challenges of reducing charge time, increasing energy density, reducing cost, and replacing scarce materials.

Presentations will be delivered from key professionals including Sharp Laboratories of Europe, St Andrews University, Nexeon, Axeon, the High Value Manufacturing Catapult, University of Oxford and dstl.

At the event, the NanoKTN will launch an industry consultation report entitled ‘Mobile and Small-Scale Energy Storage – Towards a New UK Industry’, produced by the NanoKTN in partnership with the Transport and ESP KTNs. This report summarises the case for cross-market networking and engagement to facilitate commercial exploitation of new battery technologies in mobile and small-scale static energy storage (i.e. <1mW to around 75kW) and draws on the outputs of an Industry Stakeholder Forum sponsored by the IET, held in June 2012, chaired by Dr Martin Kemp of the NanoKTN.

The workshop follows the significant announcement this year of the £13m UK Energy Storage R&D Centre, one of the three major recommendations from the NanoKTN’s industry consultation report. Based within the HVM Catapult at the University of Warwick, the Centre will capitalise on the growing electric and hybrid vehicle battery market.

Dr Martin Kemp, Theme Manager at the NanoKTN commented, “Energy storage is often taken for granted but conservation of scarce energy resources, and the need for enhanced mobile power, put devices such as batteries at the forefront of industrial development. New manufacturing processes to convert nanomaterials into batteries will help develop a new generation of devices using nanomaterials and nanostructures. Scaling up these processes is the key challenge in order to bring down cost, and this workshop will show the advances already made and the challenges still to overcome”.

“We hope that delegates will come away with a better understanding of the growing impact that nanotechnology is having in the battery industry and the future beneficial role that it can play in delivering new and innovative battery products as well as significantly enhancing current solutions.”