Slots: An entity may submit only one Concept Paper and one Full Application for each topic area/sub-topic area of this FOA. If an entity submits more than one Concept Paper and one Full Application to the same topic area/sub-topic area, EERE will request a determination from the applicant’s authorizing representative as to which application should be reviewed. Any other submissions received listing the same entity as the applicant for the same topic area/sub-topic area will not be eligible for further consideration. This limitation does not prohibit an applicant from collaborating on other applications (e.g., as a potential subrecipient or partner) so long as the entity is only listed as the applicant on one Concept Paper and one Full Application for each topic area/sub-topic area of this FOA.
Deadlines
Internal Deadline: Monday, February 12, 2024, 5pm PT Contact RII.
LOI: March 4, 2024, 5pm ET
External Deadline: May 7, 2024, 5pm ET
Award Information
Award Type: Cooperative Agreement
Estimated Number of Awards: 5 – 13
Anticipated Award Amount: Individual awards may vary between $1M and $4.1M.
Eligibility Information: The proposed prime recipient and subrecipient(s) must be domestic entities. The
following types of domestic entities are eligible to participate as a prime recipient or subrecipient of this FOA:
- Institutions of higher education;
- For-profit entities;
- Nonprofit entities; and
- State and local governmental entities and federally recognized Indian
Tribes (Indian Tribes).
Link to Award: https://eere-exchange.energy.gov/Default.aspx#FoaId53aa8240-df4b-4bc3-80b4-af5547897562
Process for Limited Submissions
PIs must submit their application as a Limited Submission through the Research Initiatives and Infrastructure (RII) Application Portal: https://rii.usc.edu/oor-portal/. Use the template provided here: RII Limited Submission Applicant Template
Materials to submit include:
- (1) Two-Page Proposal Summary (1” margins; single-spaced; standard font type, e.g. Arial, Helvetica, Times New Roman, or Georgia typeface; font size: 11 pt). Page limit includes references and illustrations. Pages that exceed the 2-page limit will be excluded from review. You must use the template linked above.
- (2) CV – (5 pages maximum)
Note: The portal requires information about the PIs in addition to department and contact information, including the 10-digit USC ID#, Gender, and Ethnicity. Please have this material prepared before beginning this application.
Purpose
This funding opportunity announcement (FOA) is being issued by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Advanced Materials and Manufacturing Technologies Office (AMMTO). The mission of AMMTO is to advance energyrelated materials and manufacturing technologies to increase domestic competitiveness and build a clean, decarbonized economy. This is in alignment with AMMTO s vision for the future – a competitive U.S. manufacturing sector that accelerates the adoption of innovative material and manufacturing technologies in support of a clean, decarbonized economy.
Building a clean and equitable energy economy and addressing the climate crisis is a top priority of the Biden Administration. This FOA will advance the Biden Administration s goals to achieve carbon pollution-free electricity by 2035 and to “deliver an equitable, clean energy future, and put the United States on a path to achieve net-zero emissions, economy-wide, by no later than 2050 1 to the benefit of all Americans. The Department of Energy is committed to pushing the frontiers of science and engineering, catalyzing clean energy jobs through research, development, demonstration, and deployment (RDD&D), and ensuring environmental justice and inclusion of underserved communities. The manufacturing research and development (R&D) activities to be funded under this FOA will support the government-wide approach to the climate crisis by driving the innovation that can lead to the deployment of clean energy technologies, which are critical for climate protection.
This FOA supports the administration goals laid out above by advancing manufacturing platform technologies, which are techniques, tools, and equipment, that can be leveraged across a spectrum of manufacturing applications. The battery manufacturing platform technologies2 in this FOA have the potential to make unique contributions to advance the Biden administration s goals of decarbonization of the electrical grid, industry, and transportation. Batteries are a critical element of the ongoing transition to an energy economy that is decarbonizing and lowering energy costs to American families and businesses. It is also critical to national competitiveness for grid storage, for the resilience of homes and businesses, and for electrification of the transportation sector.
This FOA also aligns with several initiatives that highlight the importance of accelerating domestic capabilities for battery manufacturing. For example, DOE’s Energy Storage Grand Challenge (ESGC) addresses the importance of domestic manufacturing for energy storage technologies that can meet all U.S. market demands by 2030.2 The Long Duration Storage Shot (LDSS) sets targets towards developing the technology and manufacturing to reach its cost targets by establishing a new, U.S.-based manufacturing industry for storage products.3 Projects funded under this FOA will directly support domestic battery manufacturing as well as the goals of ESGC and LDSS.
Topic Areas
AMMTO intends to fund high impact manufacturing R&D projects through this FOA.
Proposed requested funding levels and project durations should be commensurate with the work scope necessary to advance the technology to the proposed TRL. See Appendix E for EERE’s definitions of TRLs. In general, efforts should include work scopes between TRL 3 and TRL 6, although accelerating from TRL 2 is also important for fast-moving innovation in advanced materials and manufacturing.
Applicants are expected to identify a baseline technology to compare their improvement against and justify why that technology is the appropriate baseline. In addition, applicants shall provide at least three metrics for measuring their progress.
Applicants shall also identify quantitative minimum and stretch goals that use these metrics. Examples of acceptable metrics and goals are provided for each subtopic.
These are only examples, and applicants should use their own expertise and judgment to identify metrics and goals for their specific technology.
i. Topic Area 1: Platforms for Next Generation Battery Manufacturing
Under this topic, proposals of interest will focus on platform technologies related to battery manufacturing. These platforms include manufacturing R&D of innovative materials, processing, and manufacturing capability for emerging battery technologies related to sodium (Na)-ion batteries (NIBs), flow batteries, and nanolayered films for batteries and capacitors. This topic emphasizes the manufacturability and scalability of critical battery components and system architectures as well as the role of machines for battery manufacturing. Proposals should include manufacturing innovations to improve performance and address barriers to reduce manufacturing costs and accelerate market deployment.
Subtopic 1.1: Processes and Machines for Sodium-Ion Batteries
The objective of this subtopic is to develop processing machines that enable innovative NIB manufacturing processes. It is important that manufacturing processing machines have the capacity to adapt to an evolving battery manufacturing space and provide cross cutting capabilities to serve the production of different battery types. A processing machine with these capabilities serves as a platform technology applicable to a broad range of manufacturing process challenges.
Subtopic 1.1 Background: Applications of NIBs include long duration grid-scale energy storage and moderate-range electric vehicles (EVs). These applications require low cost, safe batteries with long-cycle lives. NIBs have several potential advantages over lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). From the supply chain point-of-view, NIBs replace lithium with a lower cost, more available sodium while also eliminating some other critical materials (e.g., cobalt, nickel). More than 90% of the world’s readily-mined reserves for soda ash, which is the main industrial resource of sodium, are found in the United States.12 From the technical point-of-view, NIBs may also be safer than LIBs.
Despite these advantages, NIBs have not developed as a commercial alternative to LIBs. Though NIB materials are domestically available, specific challenges associated with the processing of the materials to create NIB components have given rise to a focus on materials development. Additionally, much NIB manufacturing R&D work has focused on a lab-scale proof of concept using small-scale research equipment.
Further development requires all stages of NIB production, from manufacturing of electrodes and other components to cell assembly and finishing.
Combined with advanced processes for materials and components, specialized processing machines are essential to expand NIB manufacturing capacity. However, most of the world s suppliers of battery processing machines are based in foreign countries such that U.S.-based battery manufacturers must often rely on foreign machine suppliers who prioritize their domestic market. In addition, it is difficult to modify production lines to accommodate updated manufacturing machines. Thus, it is important to develop adaptable and versatile domestic processing machines that are also easily integrated into domestic manufacturing lines.
Subtopic 1.1 Opportunity: While the potential advantages of NIBs are promising, the U.S. is lagging behind in NIB manufacturing compared to foreign countries.13 As highlighted by a recent DOE assessment, accelerating domestic capabilities for battery manufacturing and supply chain security is crucial for economy-wide decarbonization, as well as manufacturing competitiveness and resilience.14 Developing domestic processing capabilities for NIB manufacturing would increase the resilience of domestic supply chains and allow the U.S. to lead advances in NIBs as well as their materials and components. The domestic availability of NIB manufacturing machines, vertically integrated production of electrode materials, and battery assembly can reduce costs and environmental impact by allowing the introduction of sustainable materials into a circular manufacturing process.15
Subtopic 1.1 Technology Focus: AMMTO is in a unique position to support domestic battery manufacturing and the machine industry to accelerate anode manufacturing in the U.S. AMMTO seeks projects that establish U.S. manufacturing capabilities for the low cost, large-scale, sustainable, and commercial manufacture of NIBs. To overcome the challenges and claim the benefits of the domestic manufacture of NIBs, AMMTO seeks projects that focus on advanced processes and/or highperformance processing machines for NIB manufacturing.
Subtopic 1.1 Candidate Metrics & Targets: Applications must clearly identify the starting and ending TRL for the project and justify the assigned TRL. Proposed targets and measurement of progress toward meeting targets must be substantiated. Metrics should be specific to the proposed technology and must define appropriate benchmarks or baselines, minimum targets, and stretch targets.
The baseline value should reflect the status of the proposed technology at the time of proposal and should be quantified. The final target (the value targeted at project end) also should be quantified. Applicants may also specify their own, projectspecific metrics in terms of technical performance, manufacturing capability, and any relevant manufacturing cost. Proposals must specify the required metrics outlined in the following table.
Subtopic 1.2: Processes and Design for Manufacturability of Flow Batteries
Subtopic 1.2 Background: Redox and hybrid flow batteries refer to rechargeable electrochemical batteries that charge and discharge via a reduction-oxidation reaction between two active redox species with different operating potentials.
These redox couples are dissolved in liquid electrolytes and externally stored in tanks. The electrolyte solutions are pumped through a reactor stack to produce electricity. The unique architecture of flow batteries makes it possible to decouple power and energy, offering great flexibility of scale at the system level (from residential to grid). Flow batteries are suited to a variety of stationary energy storage applications for evolving grid and on-site needs, including utility-scale energy storage, microgrids, renewables integration, backup power, and remote/offgrid power. They also provide an alternative to LIBs for these applications, with additional advantages like long cycle life, safety, and potentially reduced cost as they do not require resource constrained active materials.
Subtopic 1.2 Opportunity: Flow batteries have shown great potential, as developing technologies provide promising performance characteristics across a range of stationary storage applications. In addition, there are opportunities to leverage adjacent technologies (e.g., fuel cells for electrodes and bipolar plates, thermal storages for large tanks and plumbing design) for further development.
Nevertheless, only a handful of successfully deployed commercial flow battery systems have been deployed in the U.S. A lack of industry standardization and uncertainty in designs and manufacturing are major challenges to successful commercial flow batteries 24 as issues of scalability and manufacturability prevent achievement of cost targets and commercial viability. Most current production utilizes small scale techniques and slow processes, incurring significantly higher costs than large-scale, rapid processes. To achieve levels at or near the $0.05/kWh cost target25, deep investments in advanced manufacturing for scalable flow batteries are required.26
Subtopic 1.2 Technology Focus: To address the issues described above, AMMTO seeks projects that focus on one or both of the following areas that de-risk the flow battery technologies and facilitate large scale production: – Membrane manufacturing for scalable flow batteries. Flow battery components, such as electrodes, electrolytes, bipolar plates, and membranes lack manufacturability and scalability. Due to their complexity and specialized nature, flow battery components typically undergo limited-scale production, which increases the cost of manufacturing and limits output. Of all cell and system components, improvements in membrane materials and membrane processing methods have been identified as particularly impactful in driving production scalability of high-performance flow battery systems. Furthermore, these membrane processing methods can be broadly applied to other types of batteries and applications outside of energy storage, making it an important platform technology. Thus, there is a demand for manufacturing R&D projects that develop advanced manufacturing processes for commercial-scale, large-area membranes for long-duration energy storage applications. The process must generate highly conductive, selective, and stable membranes at a lower cost than state-of-the-art processes. Focus on improved strength and durability of the membrane material may also facilitate the adoption of thinner and less resistive membranes. Incorporation of flexibility into the manufacturing process is essential to allow production of optimized membranes for different types of battery designs and chemistry, facilitating a wide range of use cases of novel flow battery technologies.
- System design for flow batteries. U.S. manufacturing of flow battery systems has been slow and sporadic. It is critical to address ways to improve the rate of development. System-level design considerations affect not only scalability, but also the ease of installation as well as effective maintenance. Projects are encouraged that develop manufacturing technologies for standardized, modular, and scalable flow battery systems that enhance flexibility of application, facilitate rapid assembly, reduce installation burden, and maintain cost-effective operation/maintenance, such as:
- Innovative manufacturing approaches for system integration and a good balance-of-plant (BOP) will be considered, for example, design, manufacturing, and integration of multiple stacks into a system, electrolyte manufacturing (e.g., purification, periodic replacement, rejuvenation, etc.), life cycle design and manufacturing of other auxiliary systems like recirculation loops (e.g., pump, pipes, etc.).
Proposals must show and justify the ability to validate the proposed technologies and processes at TRL6 by the end of the project. The targeted technology should be able to demonstrate an improvement over existing technologies. Project progress should be measurable in terms of multiple key metrics.
Subtopic 1.2 Candidate Metrics & Targets: Applications must clearly identify the starting and ending TRL for the project and justify the assigned TRLs. Proposed targets and measurement of progress toward meeting targets must be substantiated. Metrics should be specific to the proposed technology and must define appropriate benchmarks or baselines, minimum targets, and stretch targets.
The baseline value should reflect the status of the proposed technology at the time of proposal and should be quantified. The final target (the value targeted at project end) should also be quantified. Applicants may specify their own project-specific metrics in terms of technical performance, manufacturing capability, and any relevant manufacturing cost
Subtopic 1.3: Scalable Manufacturing of Nanolayered Films for Energy Storage
The objective of this topic is to advance manufacturing platforms for low-cost, high performing nanolayered films. The nanolayered films can be used as platform materials to improve energy storage devices. Expected outcomes include domestic production of high-performance capacitor films and separators for batteries.
Specifically, proposals should address the scalability of nanolayered films and their manufacture for use in both batteries and capacitors.
Subtopic 1.3 Background: Nanolayered films are multi-layered films in which the individual layers have dimensions of tens to thousands of nanometers and the number of layers may range from two to thousands.29 Layers may differ from each other in composition, dimension, and orientation. Nanolayered films are manufactured from organic, inorganic, and ceramic materials. 30,31 The layers and the interlayer interfaces are designed to produce films with a high dielectric constant, threshold for electrical breakthrough, and mechanical strength while using less mass and volume than monolayered films.
Nanolayered films can be used as separators in batteries and when coated with metallic layers nanolayered films become nanolayered capacitor films. Use of nanolayered films as chemically inactive components in batteries and capacitors can increase energy efficiency and performance while also enabling innovations of chemically active components in batteries and supercapacitors producing next generation energy storage architectures, electrodes, and electrolytes. 32,33,34 Current lab-scale fabrication methods of nanolayered films vary based on thickness and composition of the nanolayered films and include melt casting and blow molding (>20 m), melt extrusion and the subsequent stretching (2-20 m), solution casting and electrospinning technology (1 20 m), chemical vapor deposition (CVD, <1 m) and atomic layer deposition (ALD, <0.2 m). These processes are further complicated by doping, fillings, grafting, crosslinking, and interlayer interactions used to provide the desired chemical, optical, and electronic properties. Given the dimensions and complexity of the films, it has been challenging to scale up lab-based fabrication techniques for commercial production while also maintaining product quality. 35,36,37
Challenges to the commercial scale manufacture of nanolayered films jeopardize the adoption and subsequent benefits of nanolayered films in commercial energy storage devices. Domestic solutions to these manufacturing challenges would provide large-scale domestic production of nanolayered films, allow the U.S. to improve energy efficiencies and performance in electronic devices and EVs, support the integration of renewable energies into the electric grid, and safeguard U.S. leadership in the development of next generation energy storage devices.
Subtopic 1.3 Opportunity: Current battery and capacitor manufacturing processes present an opportunity to drop in nanolayered films (if they are available), as a replacement for current monolayered film separators. Drop-in replacements involve little or no capital investments, can be integrated rapidly, and produce quick financial and performance returns. Improvements resulting from the drop in of nanolayered films for battery and capacitor manufacturing include increased energy efficiencies and energy storage performance with reduced material usage and cost.
The impacts of improved energy efficiency and performance in energy storage devices will be significant for current and projected energy applications. Improved energy efficiencies in portable electronic devices may offset the prolific growth of these devices as a share of the residential, business, and medical energy consuming sector. EVs are a projected to grow to be approximately half of all vehicles sold by 2030. Use of nanolayered films increases the energy density and performance of EV batteries and supercapacitors used in regenerative braking, allowing for decreased costs and increased range for EVs. With renewable energies such as solar and wind expected to supply 44% of U.S. electricity by 2050, better batteries and capacitors will be needed to integrate renewable energies into the electricity grid. Through these applications, nanolayered films will contribute to energy efficiencies across major energy sectors, significantly impacting progress toward a decarbonized economy.
Subtopic 1.3 Technology Focus: To overcome the challenges and claim the benefits of the domestic manufacture of nanolayered films for batteries and capacitors, AMMTO seeks projects that translate current fabrications of nanolayered films to large-scale production processes allowing for the commercial use of nanolayered films in batteries, capacitors, and other energy storage devices. Following is the area of focus:
- Nanolayered films for large-scale production. Current nanolayered films have been created with lab-based fabrication techniques that are not amenable to large-scale, commercial manufacturing. For prototype capacitors, testing films are produced with a width of at least 150 mm and a length of at least 100 m, whereas these values must be at least an order of magnitude greater for commercial scale applications. However, commercial scale-up of film production leads to additional imperfections that reduce film performance. In addition, scale-up problems increase as the thickness of film layers decrease. 38 A design effort that approaches scalability from a materials production may produce a material platform for which the manufacture of the materials is more easily scalable than what is currently available. Alternatively, efforts may approach scalability from the process or machine perspective and focus on the scalability of solution casting, electrospinning, deposition, or melt extrusion. Both approaches must allow for doping, filling, grafting, and crosslinking. The objective is to develop platform materials, processes, or machines to produce commercially available, high performing nanolayered films for batteries and capacitors.
Proposals must show and justify the ability to validate the proposed technologies and processes at TRL 6 by the end of the project. The targeted technology should be able to demonstrate an improvement over existing technologies. Project progress should be measurable in terms of multiple key metrics.
Topic 1.3 Candidate Metrics & Targets: Applications must clearly identify the starting and ending TRL for the project and justify the assigned TRLs. Proposed targets and measurement of progress toward meeting targets must be substantiated. Metrics should be specific to the proposed technology and must define appropriate benchmarks or baselines, minimum targets, and stretch targets. The baseline value should reflect the status of the proposed technology at the time of proposal and should be quantified. The final target (the value targeted at project end) should also be quantified. Applicants may specify their own project-specific metrics in terms of technical performance, manufacturing capability, and any relevant manufacturing cost.
Subtopics 1.1, 1.2, and 1.3 ONLY: In addition to the Federal Assistance Reporting Requirements Checklist, the following deliverables are required for awards made under this topic:
- Quarterly quantitative assessments of production volume and product qualification.
- A techno-economic analysis (TEA) or cost modeling for production volumes consistent with U.S. supply needs.
- By the end of the project, project teams must submit the final testing and validation data as described by their testing and validation plan developed at the start of their project.
The testing and validation data will be conducted by the Applicant following test protocols approved by the DOE. This data will be shared with DOE. Test procedures will be finalized between the performers and DOE. However, initial plans for testing and test procedures must be addressed in the application. These initial plans shall incorporate specifications and limits supplied by the manufacturer for the specific technology. The results of the testing may be documented in a publicly releasable Summary Test Report (approved by both the DOE and Applicant prior to release) that validates the performance of the deliverables relative to the performance targets, as well as the technology deployment impact relative to DOE strategic goals.
AMMTO and the Applicant will approve the Summary Test Report.
Topic Area 2: Smart Manufacturing Platforms for Battery Production
AMMTO recognizes the timely and prudent need to expand the scope of smart manufacturing to satisfy the core aspects of battery manufacturing. AMMTO seeks proposals that focus on the smart path toward smart battery manufacturing.
Given the data-intensive nature of the Areas of Interest under Topic 2, awardees are expected to observe best practices for data stewardship. Throughout the project, applicants will be required to publish project datasets through a designated DOEapproved data repository using appropriate content models and/or data formats for the relevant field of study. Each applicant whose Full Application is selected for award negotiations will be required to submit an expanded Data Management Plan (DMP) during the award negotiations phase, in accordance with Section VI.B.xxiii.
Topic 2 Background: The manufacturing community can reduce manufacturing costs and accelerate time-to-market by integrating performance characteristics of final products with processes aided by a smart manufacturing framework. Smart manufacturing is the information-driven collaborative orchestration of physical and digital processes across the entire value chain.41 Smart manufacturing relies on a combination of manufacturing technologies (i.e., physical process ) and intelligent technologies (i.e., virtual process) to make designing, processing, and manufacturing faster and more cost-effective. The physical processes focus on controlling and optimizing processing conditions for desired performance, while virtual processes uncover complex linkages between them and gain insight into better ways to design and manufacture products (i.e., feedback for physical processes).
Smart manufacturing builds upon the pillars of lean manufacturing, digital manufacturing, and continuous manufacturing to achieve superior throughput, efficiency, quality, and precision in the manufacturing process. The term “lean” refers to creating maximum outputs with reduced inputs in terms of cost, time, energy, and effort. To optimize entire manufacturing processes, digital manufacturing primarily emphasizes the digitization and integration of manufacturing activities – collected from various tools such as simulation/modeling and equipment with properties and performance of products. The basic idea of continuous manufacturing is to facilitate faster production through transformation of the traditional batch manufacturing process into an integrated manufacturing process.
Smart manufacturing frameworks that encompass all activities related to the generation, release, sharing, and reuse of manufacturing data enable engineers to fully leverage complex engineering data. The convergence of the physical process and the virtual process is clearer now than ever before. Such a shift towards connected technologies is apparent across most industry sectors, including battery manufacturing.
Topic 2 Opportunity: Smart manufacturing is particularly applicable to enhanced battery production with respect to the core aspects of battery manufacturability, scalability, reproducibility,42 and circularity43 which are interrelated concepts of domestic battery manufacturing operations.44 Instead of a traditional, slower process of post-production analysis of numerous trial and error approaches, smart battery manufacturing is about rational design, control, and monitoring of processes. Such activities include automated operations for process monitoring and adjusting manufacturing variables with the aid of computational learning techniques like AI, ML, and DL. Application of digital techniques to the production of the varied components and assembly of batteries will build upon and amplify the core principles of lean and continuous manufacturing by providing real-time data, intelligent automation, and predictive analytics.
For the enduring impacts of smart manufacturing and its boundless potential, it is also important to integrate equipment into advanced manufacturing processes, automated manufacturing lines, and quality practices. However, the battery manufacturing community lacks the knowledge of how to amalgamate these components. Additionally, it may not be practical to install in-line metrology tools into a processing line due to the complex process design and expenses of installation, difficulty in simultaneous in-situ monitoring, and/or the high cost of maintenance. At a commercial scale, it is necessary to increase the connectivity between equipment, tools, and processes to achieve enhanced performance of end products (i.e., battery components, packs, and systems) in the most efficient ways possible.
The applications should focus on developing innovative ways to revolutionize battery production by maximizing the benefits of smart manufacturing. Knowing any major pain point for battery manufacturers would be powerful for focusing on an initial smart manufacturing approach and scale for that challenge space. Desired projects should be able to develop industry use cases or best practices for digital transformation of battery manufacturing and system-level process optimization to increase U.S. competitiveness in battery manufacturing. The proposed approaches should enable manufacturers to use real-time, data-driven, rational decision-making solutions to embed data information, and improve product flows and quality from the supply chain to manufacturers and end-users. The outcomes should be a valueadded benefit to existing manufacturing R&D activities.
Topic 2 Technology Focus: To overcome the challenges described before and claim the benefits of smart manufacturing to improve performance and reduce manufacturing costs of batteries, AMMTO seeks projects that focus on development of broadly applicable smart manufacturing platforms that can be adapted to augment the production of a variety of battery technologies, relating to one or more of the following areas:
- Smart design, control, and monitoring of processes: The principles of smart manufacturing can be applied to address the complex processes associated with battery manufacturing. It is beneficial to develop a wide range of synthesis/process recipes with digital tools for merging heterogeneous, multi-scale, and voluminous data from theory, simulation, processing, and characterization for full insight into processing-performance relationships, leading to knowledge about how to optimize manufacturing processes and maximize the power of prediction of battery behaviors.45 Smart manufacturing can also be valuable to effectively control and monitor numerous, complex process parameters for the production of battery materials, components, and systems.
- Smart equipment for smart battery manufacturing: Equipment needs to be more flexible and expandable to meet current and future demands of a complex and evolving battery manufacturing environment. For example, smart sensors with the Internet of Things (IoT), vision systems, data analytics, and cloud computing could be the core building blocks of the connected battery manufacturing facility and the smart battery supply chain. Also, there is a need for advanced high-throughput, large-scale equipment that fits into smart battery manufacturing platforms to increase processibility and scalability to battery manufacturing processing.
Advanced smart manufacturing will continue to be a powerful technology that spurs growth in basic science and applied R&D as well as manufacturing R&D. Proposals must show and justify the ability to validate the proposed technologies and processes at TRL 6 by the end of the project. The targeted technology should be able to show an improvement over existing technologies. Project progress should be measurable in terms of multiple key metrics.
Topic 2 Candidate Metrics & Targets: Applications must clearly identify the starting and ending TRL for the project and justify the assigned TRLs. Proposed targets and measurement of progress toward meeting targets must be substantiated. Metrics should be specific to the proposed technology and must define appropriate benchmarks or baselines, minimum targets, and stretch targets. The baseline value should reflect the status of the proposed technology at the time of proposal and should be quantified. The final target (the value targeted at project end) also should be quantified. Applicants may also specify their own, project-specific metrics in terms of technical performance, manufacturing capability, and any relevant manufacturing cost. Proposals must specify the required metrics outlined in the following table.
This topic aims to create an interdisciplinary manufacturing R&D framework such as the public-private partnerships (PPPs) for collaborations between manufacturing process developers, smart manufacturing experts, and equipment builders.
Therefore, AMMTO encourages applicants from the broader battery and energy storage community to form cross-sector teams that span organizational boundaries.
By doing so, applicants will help each other de-risk the development process for all parties, deliver innovative battery products, and promote U.S. battery manufacturing competitiveness by strengthening innovative ways through smart manufacturing.
Topic 2 ONLY: AMMTO recognizes that process data is the basis of manufacturing R&D. A large volume of data such as image data, sequential data, and metadata is often buried in the growing volume of processing data for battery manufacturing. A common limitation of these data sources is that information is not in a structured format. Thus, there is a critical need to develop more efficient ways to collect, store, and analyze data from manufacturing processes in standardized formats. Standards for data formatting are important to facilitate data use in AI/ML/DL and other smart manufacturing practices. Ideal data formats can be extended to any other type of process data, facilitating coordinated R&D within the manufacturing ecosystem.
Therefore, in addition to the Federal Assistance Reporting Requirements Checklist, applicants who will apply data-intensive methods (e.g., high-throughput processing, AI, ML, DL, etc.) will be required to publish project datasets through a designated, DOE-approved data repository using appropriate content models and/or data formats for the relevant field of study. Datasets should meet the principles of findability, accessibility, interoperability, and reusability (FAIR). A report is required as a deliverable to show submission of the datasets to the repository.
All work under EERE funding agreements must be performed in the United States.
See Section IV.J.iii. and Appendix C.
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