Sandia National Labs Academic Alliance & UNM Collaboration Report 2020-2021

HIGH-POWER APPLICATIONS GET CHARGED UP WITH UNCONVENTIONAL BATTERIES

The basic principles involved in a thermal battery occur at the atomic level of matter, with energy being added to or taken from either a solid mass or a liquid volume that causes the substance’s temperature to change. Some thermal batteries also involve causing a substance to transition thermally through a phase transition, which causes even more energy to be stored and released. Thermal batteries have many benefits including being rugged, reliable, high power, able to withstand severe stresses such as acceleration, shock, vibration and spin, have a long shelf life, and can be designed and optimized for power or capacity. These batteries are essential power sources in a broad range of systems that restrict them to cylindrical form factors, small diameters, and excessive thickness. An LDRD project done in collaboration with UNM is focused on the development of a large area, low profile, and non-cylindrical thermal battery cell facilitated by a unique slurry- processed binder chemistry and realized through an additive manufacturing

(AM) fabrication approach. Slurries are a thoroughly mixed complex suspension system containing a large percentage of solid particles of different chemicals, sizes, and shapes in a highly viscous media.

18

Sandia Academic Alliance Program

Made with FlippingBook Digital Publishing Software