How this centre can help transform battery materials technology

As industries take steps to meet net-zero targets and transition towards electrification, advanced battery materials are crucial to delivering the next generation of energy storage technologies. This will help drive demand for improved electric vehicles (EVs) and efficient energy storage on the power grid. 

The Advanced Materials Battery Industrialisation Centre (AMBIC), funded by UKRI’s Faraday Battery Challenge and delivered by Innovate UK, is a dedicated environment to design, develop, test and commercialise new battery materials and technologies. Its unique setup provides critical capabilities to bridge the gap between battery materials research and cell prototyping. This includes lithium-ion, solid-state batteries (SSBs) and other alternative battery technologies. 

Based at CPI in NETPark, County Durham and at WMG, University of Warwick in Coventry, the Centre provides access to state-of-the-art facilities and technical expertise. It accelerates the journey from concept to commercialisation and will help ensure that the UK remains at the forefront of the global battery industry, driving sustainable solutions for a cleaner, more efficient future. 

What are the challenges?

One of the biggest barriers to innovation is that batteries are complex to build. The materials process and cell optimisation are intimately linked and often must be developed in tandem to achieve maximum performance from both. In addition, while researchers can produce novel materials in gram-scale quantities, scaling up to kilograms for commercial validation demands specialised equipment and expertise in process chemistry and engineering. This requires significant investment, often out of reach for smaller companies. 

SMEs also face difficulties obtaining battery materials by the kilogram with consistent quality control and purchasing tonnes of materials in bulk is economically unviable. This makes it nearly impossible for them to compete with established industry players. Further upstream in the supply chain, companies producing raw materials or recovering them from discarded batteries must demonstrate the performance and validity of their products before supplying them to customers. This adds another hurdle in the commercialisation process. 

These barriers make it harder to get new battery innovations across the ​“valley of death” — the critical stage where promising technologies struggle to transition from the laboratory to industrial-scale production. 

How will this centre tackle these challenges?

Led by CPI, in partnership with WMG which are both part of the High Value Manufacturing Catapult, AMBIC provides open-access facilities for rapid development and scaling of battery innovations from powder-to-cell and validation for commercial viability. 

Equipped with state-of-the-art technology, this Centre enables the production of multi-kilogram batches of innovative battery materials through processing techniques such as: 

• Co-precipitation

• Dry and wet milling

• Powder drying and blending

• Calcination under controlled atmospheres.

Customers and collaborators can use the facility flexibly, configuring the processes to suit their specific needs. Benefitting from CPI’s inorganic materials toolkit and process chemistry expertise to scale their innovations from grams to kilograms efficiently. 

AMBIC offers the unique service of integrating real-time data collection into the material synthesis process. Using techniques such as soft sensors, we can generate deep insights to optimise process scale-up and improve quality control. This can be combined with machine learning and AI-driven approaches to build predictive models and progress innovations rapidly to commercial production scale. 

Additionally, automated screening technologies – capable of producing up to 40 variations in a single day – can rapidly test and optimise new active battery material slurries and electrode coatings for new combinations of materials or cell designs at unprecedented speeds. 

This is supported by the comprehensive analytical infrastructure available at CPI’s National Formulation Centre, which ensures battery materials meet the highest industry standards before progressing to full-scale deployment. 

AMBIC’s capabilities accelerate the development and commercialisation of high-performance, cost-effective and sustainable battery materials to enable the net-zero transition. In doing so, it supports the growth of the UK’s battery ecosystem and ambition to become a global leader in battery technology.