More efficient battery production – revoLect Project.
The Chair “Production Engineering of E-Mobility Components” (PEM) of RWTH Aachen University has begun collaborating with seven partners from science and industry in the “revoLect” project.
Until the end of August 2025, the players in the project, which is funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, are to develop new technologies and components that can be used to produce lithium-ion batteries more efficiently and in a way that conserves resources. To this end, the project is pursuing two key innovations: replacing the usual metal foils with a metallized fabric structure and using silicon as the anode material.
Heiner Heimes, Executive Board member Professor said:
Lithium-ion batteries will remain an indispensable key component for electric mobility and the success of the energy transition for some time to come.
“Their high energy density and cycle stability enable electric vehicles to achieve a long range at marketable costs.” The task now is to exploit the potential of the batteries by further developing all their components and their production technologies.
Reducing the use of primary raw materials
To this end, the project partners intend to pool their expertise along the entire battery production process chain and develop novel electrodes with lightweight fabric-based current collectors for lithium-ion batteries using a resource-saving technology. The process requires less use of primary raw materials such as copper and aluminum compared with previous lithium-ion batteries.
At the same time, the technology enables further material savings from the cell to the system level through higher energy density. As part of the project, PEM is to develop processes for coating the fabric-based current collectors with slurry-based electrode materials. Among other things, the pilot plant for cell production will be adapted to process the novel materials. In addition, the RWTH facility is investigating the design and production of the battery cells.
More Efficient Battery Production: PEM Starts Into “revoLect” Project, April 17, 2023