Chris Newmarker

June 8, 2016

2 Min Read
This New Lab Seeks to Make Better Batteries

Is Michigan going to become the go-to place for battery innovation?

Chris Newmarker

University of Michigan Battery Lab

(Image courtesy of University of Michigan)

The University of Michigan is touting its new 2700-square-foot Battery Fabrication and Characterization User Facility, which has the goal of making lighter, safer, more cost-effective batteries for medical devices, automobiles, and more. 

Ford Motor Co. and the Michigan Economic Development Corp. helped the university pay for the roughly $9 million lab, which opened in October 2015. 

The lab has the equipment to build and characterize battery types, including coin cells, often used as proof-of-concept, and the 18650 batteries similar to the "AA" cylindrical batteries. There's also the ability to manufacture 72x110 mm prismatic pouch cells, which are most often used in laptops.

The goal is to provide pilot-scale battery creation, characterization, and testing.

"A majority of people who are testing out these batteries are often doing so on a small, laboratory scale," Greg Less, manager of the Battery Lab, said in University of Michigan news release. "But small scale isn't sufficient to gather the data necessary to convince potential customers of a new battery product. Our lab allows people to test their next-generation ideas on a larger, more production-level scale, which allows for more accurate testing of things like cycle life and abuse tolerance."

The lab is also open-access, providing space to build and test battery concepts, at the same time that it fully protects its users' intellectual property.

"We don't want to own part of the intellectual property of our customers," Less said. "We are set up to completely avoid IP entanglement, if at all possible."

Chris Newmarker is senior editor of Qmed and MPMN. Follow him on Twitter at @newmarker.

Like what you're reading? Subscribe to our daily e-newsletter.

Sign up for the QMED & MD+DI Daily newsletter.

You May Also Like