Materials for the Battery of Tomorrow

From 7 to 9 May, Asahi Kasei and its US sub­sidiary Cel­gard pre­sent­ed a wide range of high-per­for­mance mate­ri­als for auto­mo­tive bat­ter­ies at the Bat­tery Show Europe 2019 in Stuttgart, Germany.

A high­light at Asahi Kasei’s booth was the mod­el of a lithi­um-ion bat­tery, con­tain­ing, among oth­er things, high-per­for­mance plas­tics and sep­a­ra­tors. With this exhib­it, the com­pa­ny demon­strates the range of its prod­ucts for safe, effi­cient as well as com­pact struc­tur­al parts and com­po­nents for batteries.

This includes the high-per­for­mance plas­tic m‑PPE (mod­i­fied polypheny­lene ether) as an inno­v­a­tive mate­r­i­al solu­tion for struc­tur­al com­po­nents of the bat­tery hous­ing. The m‑PPE ther­mo­plas­tic Xyron is elec­tri­cal­ly non-con­duc­tive and is char­ac­ter­ized by its low den­si­ty and resis­tance to elec­trolyte flu­ids. This makes it a suit­able mate­r­i­al for light­weight and com­pact bat­tery housings.

With the m‑PPE par­ti­cle foam Sun­Force, Asahi Kasei offers a prod­uct that is dis­tin­guished by a high flame retar­dance (UL94 V‑0), high forma­bil­i­ty and high ther­mal insu­la­tion prop­er­ties. The engi­neer­ing plas­tic thus con­tributes to the com­pact design of the bat­tery hous­ings and increas­es the safe­ty and effi­cien­cy of the bat­ter­ies. At the same time, the mate­r­i­al is high­ly process­able: The foam beads are man­u­fac­tured with steam mould­ing. In con­trast to oth­er mate­ri­als processed by injec­tion mould­ing, tool­ing costs can thus be kept low.

In addi­tion to m‑PPE, the com­pa­ny – as one of only four ful­ly inte­grat­ed sup­pli­ers of polyamide 6.6 world­wide – presents the prod­uct grades SN and SG of the Leona PA 6.6 series as mate­ri­als for bat­tery com­po­nents that con­tribute to reduc­ing costs and weight.

Since Dr. Aki­ra Yoshi­no, research asso­ciate at Asahi Kasei, devel­oped the very first func­tion­al and safe pro­to­type of a lithi­um-ion bat­tery in the ear­ly 1980s, the com­pa­ny has been a pio­neer in the field of lithi­um-ion bat­tery research. As world mar­ket leader in lithi­um-ion bat­tery sep­a­ra­tors, the Asahi Kasei Group is today con­sid­ered as a sub­stan­tial mate­r­i­al sup­pli­er for the bat­tery industry.