Manufacturing structural battery composites with high mechanical performance using hot pressing technique

Abstract

Structural battery composites (SBCs), which offer both advantages of energy storage and resistance to mechanical failure, have become a prominent topic in the next generation advanced battery technology. However, the current mechanical performance of SBCs does not meet the requirements for industrial applications due to inferior forming quality and unstable process control. To address the issue, this work presents a novel vacuum assisted hot pressing process and integrated manufacturing strategy that simultaneously addresses high-temperature compatibility between electrolyte and resin, pressure control during curing and one-step manufacturing of the SBCs. The fabricated SBCs achieved high mechanical properties with ultimate tensile strength of 371.86 MPa and Young’s modulus of 40.35 GPa. The coin cells based on the carbon fabric electrodes were assembled using the high temperature and high-pressure manufacturing method and undergone a 200-cycle galvanostatic charge-discharge test, showing high initial capacity of 126.6 mAh/g and good capacity retention. The proposed manufacturing process can be applied to various battery combinations, including the state-of-the-art SBCs with quasi-solid or all solid electrolytes.

© 2026 The Authors. Published by ELSEVIER Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0)

Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the NAMRI|SME.