SURFACTANT

Point of contact: Prof. Duncan Hand

This is a joint project between the University of Sheffield, Heriot-Watt University, the University of the West of Scotland (UWS) and the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC).  The aim of the project is to develop a sustainable manufacturing process for battery applications, enabling assembly, non-destructive disassembly and reassembly between electrical connections to achieve full recovery of the cells and busbars.

The project includes: Laser texturing to locally modify solder wettability (Heriot-Watt with UWS), design and manufacture of a new fluxless solder material using active elements (selected using thermodynamic modelling) creating a flow index to provide a favourable bond (Sheffield), and development of laser soldering and de-soldering processes with suitable in-process monitoring (AMRC) to join and dismantle busbars across multiple cells simultaneously to achieve the required production rates.

The project is funded by EPSRC, project EP/Z536428/1

Collaborators: University of Sheffield, AMRC and UWS.