CAREER: Additive Manufacturing of Structural Battery Carbon Fiber Reinforced Composites

This Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) grant supports fundamental research on additive manufacturing of novel structural batteries made with carbon fiber reinforced composites. By integrating the functions of energy storage and load bearing into a single structure, a structural battery can reduce system mass and volume. This can boost performance and efficiency in fields like electric transportation, where the batteries can increase operation range and service life. However, the design and fabrication of structural batteries present new challenges which extend beyond the scope of conventional manufacturing approaches. This research program will investigate a novel manufacturing process to additively manufacture continuous carbon fibers built into multifunctional three-dimensional structural batteries. The knowledge developed through this project will promote the development of next-generation lightweight materials, open up new design opportunities, and provide more flexibility in decentralization of energy storage to meet the increasing demands in electrification of vehicle transportation. The education and outreach objectives, integrated with the research plan, aim to motivate more engineering students to pursue graduate study and broaden participation in clean-energy manufacturing. A priority will be placed on first-generation college students from groups underrepresented in engineering, with an aim to significantly broaden the horizons of students with manufacturing knowledge, leading to greater graduate school participation and ultimately fostering a globally competitive engineering workforce. Coextrusion-based additive manufacturing techniques provide a promising route for fabrication of multifunctional structural batteries with continuous carbon fibers. However, the existing fabrication techniques are mainly optimized for mechanical performance. This project will address the knowledge gap around the fiber impregnation mechanism during additive manufacturing of multifunctional fibrous structural battery composites. A multi-scale computational fluid dynamics analysis will be performed to study the effects of pressure and viscosity during the fiber network's dynamic capillary permeation and penetration processes. The carbon fiber micro-battery will be functionalized through coating and tested for the coating’s effects on fiber wetting, mechanical and electrochemical performance. In-situ coupled mechano-electrochemical measurements will be used to test the printed structural battery samples. The corresponding mechanical and electrochemical properties and composite microstructure will be measured and correlated with the identified wetting and impregnation mechanisms across different length scales to validate the multi-scale computational fluid dynamics analysis. The study aims to establish a closed-loop fundamental relationship between the 3D printing process, obtained microstructure, and coupled multifunctional performance. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.