With a project from the field of battery research, it won the vote at the congress for the promotion of innovations from the "Industrial Collective Research" program. Previously, the expert committees from science and industry had selected three finalists from 23 submitted Industrial Collective Research (IGF) projects, as announced by the Federal Ministry of Economics and Climate Protection (BMWK). From these three finalists, the audience at the congress selected the winning project in a live vote. The award is being presented by the BMWK for the first time this year.
Improved battery performance and service life
The project "Functional Coating of Battery Powders" dealt with the question of how the performance and service life of batteries can be optimized. In addition to the European Research Association for Thin Films (EFDS), the Fraunhofer Institute for Ceramic Technologies and Systems (IKTS) and eleven companies were also involved.
The project focused on increasing the energy density and service life of the batteries and preventing degradation of the electrolyte. The application of protective coatings on active material particles (NMC811 and LNMO) was intended to reduce degradation and thus increase the service life of batteries. The researchers selected two coating processes, atomic layer deposition (ALD) on the one hand and wet chemical spray drying on the other, to apply protective layers to the active materials NMC811 and LNMO. In both processes, they produced different coating materials in terms of composition and layer thickness and investigated their electrochemical properties.
Both coating processes lead to the goal
The rate test and the long-term test of very thin Al2O3 ALD layers on LNMO showed positive effects. For the LNMO sample coated with only 1 nm, the loss is low compared to the uncoated sample. The spray-drying layers of NMC811 with Li2O∙WO3 show an accumulation of tungsten on the powder surface and along the grain boundaries. Coating with 0.5 mol% Li2O∙WO3 significantly improves the electrochemical rate capability and cycling stability of the active material. The researchers believe that scaling up both coating processes to a technical scale is possible and can be used for the production of long-life batteries.
Other finalists in the vote for the "IGF Project of the Year" 2025 were the projects "Electrodynamic antifouling coating of optical surfaces of ships and marine technology", submitted by the Forschungsvereinigung Schiffbau und Meerestechnik e.V., and "Increasing productivity and flat film quality by preventing the formation of deposits on chill rollers", submitted by the Institute of Plastics Processing (IKV) in Industry and the Skilled Crafts at RWTH Aachen University.