Lithium Ion Cathode Materials – FutureCat

Timeline with milestone/deliverables (to September 2025)

FutureCat is targeting three transformative step-changes:  

• Novel redox processes: understanding novel redox processes and delivering new high-energy/power cathodes exploiting new knowledge. 
• Scalable designer morphologies: longer lifetime, high-energy/power through concentration gradient, single crystal and thin coatings. 

• Materials delivery: scaling-up industrially relevant Ni-rich cathodes and developing 
• scalable routes to new earth-abundant cathode materials

FutureCat will deliver cathode materials and fabrication methodologies that provide enhanced energy density, cycle-life, power output and reduced costs, empowering UK battery manufacturing.  

Project innovations

FutureCat sets ambitious targets to make fundamental cathode breakthroughs that deliver significant improvements in energy/power density, cost and first life:  

• Electrochemical step-changes through strategic synthesis of doped-cathode variants exhibiting controlled morphology, where novel additives/interfaces promote fast ion conduction; including cation-plus-anion redox active materials, gaining a fundamental understanding of anion redox processes to harness and stabilise additional capacity; fundamental scientific enquiry of underpinning synthesis–structure–property relationship governing performance.  
• Establishing design principles for durable cathodes informed by mechanochemical properties; developing new mechanical-testing methods informing the synthetic design process.  
• Determining new methodologies for assessing disorder in high-capacity cathodes, fast-tracking theory-meeting-experiment to inform then realise new target chemistries.  

This innovation pathway also considers material/method scalability and lean-manufacturing techniques to smooth the path from laboratory to commercialisation.  

One of the Faraday Battery Challenge Round 5 projects awarded in January 2023 was CatContiCryst, led by NiTech Solutions. It aims to demonstrate the technical feasibility of manufacturing cathode precursor materials using unique, patented, continuous oscillating baffled reactor/crystalliser technology, which allows manipulation of the chemical reaction and solid-state formation processes that can lead to improved final product performance of NMC cathode materials. The project aims to provide process data to aid future scale-up, define the process parameters that produce single-crystal cathode morphologies subject to reduced degradation in use in batteries, and define the benefits of continuous processing over batch technologies (improved production efficiency and quality). Know-how on the chemical and solid-state processes and cell production and testing is led by the University of Sheffield, in part developed as part of the Faraday Institution’s FutureCat project. The project also includes CPI.