LEAP: Lithium-ion: Enhancing and Accelerating Performance
The overarching aim of the LEAP project is to develop a fundamental understand of critical industry-relevant chemistries to identify strategies for supressing degradation and accelerating performance improvements.
The project is examining how environmental and internal battery stresses (such as high temperatures and charge rates) may degrade cells over time. Fast charging can rapidly accelerate degradation and even trigger degradation mechanisms that are not present in ‘normal’ operating conditions. A key goal for the automotive industry is to understand more fully the causes and mechanisms of degradation to enable improved control and prediction of the state-of-health of battery systems. Results will include the optimisation of battery materials, electrolytes and cells to extend battery life (and hence EV range), which will also translate into reduced battery costs.
The goal of the project is to develop world-leading science to unlock the potential of highly sustainable and high performance materials to form the next generation of batteries for EVs and beyond. Its insights into degradation mechanisms can be used directly by industry organisations (in automotive and other applications) to extend lifetime and performance.
Building upon a comprehensive mechanistic understanding of NMC811 – graphite batteries obtained via the former Degradation project, LEAP will transition to investigate:
- state-of-the-art very high nickel NMC9055 materials from commercial suppliers.
- in-house made lithium nickel oxides, to identify the fundamental phenomena involved in the absence of cobalt.
- lithium manganese iron phosphate (LMFP), as a cheaper and more sustainable cathode option, offering a higher energy density than the well-established LFP, particularly when blended with NMC.
- state-of-the-art anode-less battery configurations, which show promise in achieving unprecedented high energy densities.
Timeline with milestones / deliverables (to March 2030)
- Identify the key stress-induced degradation processes and kinetics that occur in cells.
- Link the electrical signatures of degradation with specific chemical and materials processes so that they can be identified.
- Examine and understand the physicochemical mechanisms of degradation in high-nickel and cobalt-free positive electrode materials.
- Examine and understand the physicochemical mechanisms of degradation of graphite and anode free system. Emphasis is being placed on the interaction, or ‘crosstalk’, effects of positive electrode materials on causing or accelerating these pathways at the electrode/electrolyte interface.
- Define and investigate degradation mitigation strategies to extend battery life for different chemistries, such as the use of electrolyte additives, cycling protocols and active material coatings.
Project innovations
World-leading experts are using a wide range of characterisation methods to unravel the complexity of degradation processes, providing a more complete understanding of the signatures of degradation. This holistic understanding will guide the successful identification of promising solutions to enhance battery longevity, better prediction of battery failure, and accelerate the development of promising next-generation Li-ion battery chemistries.
LEAP’s use of industry-standard materials and analysis under industry-standard testing conditions (enabled by the pilot-scale electrode and pouch cell manufacturing facilities at WMG, University of Warwick) means project insights are directly relevant to industry.
Degradation consortium meeting, Homerton College, Cambridge, July 2025. Photo by Nathan Pitt. ©University of Cambridge.
Principal Investigators
Professor Dame Clare Grey
University of Cambridge
Professor Louis Piper
University of Warwick
Project Leaders
Dr Rhodri Jervis
University College London
Dr Bethan Davies
Imperial College London
Project Manager
Dr Alex Kersting
University of Cambridge
University Partners
University of Cambridge (Co-Lead)
University of Warwick (Co-lead)
Imperial College London
Newcastle University
University College London
University of Oxford
University of Southampton
+ 5 Industrial Partners
The Faraday Institution’s LEAP project has been enabled thanks to funding from the Battery Innovation Programme, through the Department for Business and Trade and delivered by Innovate UK.
