Safety issues arise with the utilisation of liquid organic electrolyte which are becoming even more critical with the nearly introduction of advanced materials made to increase cell voltage and fast-charging rates.
Solid-state electrolytes enable overcoming current battery cells limitations in terms of voltage and safety leading to and increased intrinsic thermal and electrochemical stability. Therefore, there is a growing need of Research and Innovation addressed to develop appropriate processing techniques for assemble cells based on solid type electrolytes including all current foreseen technological options: polymer-based, hybrid polymeric, inorganic and other alternatives such as gel-like semisolid electrolytes.

Additionally, appropriate processing techniques should be developed, optimised, adapted or reinvented for the preparation of dense electrode and electrolyte layers, to enable scale up of solid-state battery cells (Generation4a and Generation4b) towards industrial GWh mass production.

Projects funded under this topic should make provisions to establish adequate coordination schemes with related materials running projects, with special focus in HORIZON-CL5-2021-D2-01-03: Advanced high-performance Generation 4a, 4b (solid-state) Li-ion batteries.
The new manufacturing techniques for the SSB Gen 4a/4b batteries should focus on cost, performance, safety and sustainability with clear prospects for cost-competitive large-scale manufacturing and uptake by the electro mobility sector. Also, as the manufacturing techniques may benefit from digitalization, and be ready to be integrated in digitally-driven larger production lines, project proposals should address digitalization within their scope. Manufacturing and cell assembly processes to be developed should be more sustainable compared to the current LIB manufacturing. In order to demonstrate cost reduction and improvement in other parameters projects are expected to provide comparison with baseline manufacturing techniques.