Carbon fiber reinforced structural lithium-ion battery composite: Multifunctional power integration for CubeSats

By Kathleen Moyer, Chuanzhe Meng, Breeanne Marshall, Osama Assal, Janna Eaves, D. Perez, Ryan L. Karkkainen, L. Roberson, C. Pint. 2020

191 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Here we demonstrate a multifunctional battery platform where lithium-ion battery active materials are combined with carbon fiber weave materials to form energy storage composites using traditional layup methods. This design utilizes epoxy resin as a packaging medium for the battery and the carbon fibers as both a conductive current collector and structurally reinforcing layer. These composites exhibit energy density surpassing 35 Wh/kg relative to combined active and inactive composite materials, stable full-cell cycling, and mechanical properties including tensile strength of 213 MPa and Young’s modulus of ~1.8 MPa/(Δl/l). Structural battery panels developed from this approach are demonstrated as an integrated power delivery platform for a 1U CubeSat frame to augment or replace interior external battery packs. Overall, this approach shows a new path for battery integration into systems where the inactive materials for energy storage are the active composite structural materials.

Subfields: Aerospace Engineering, Automotive Engineering, Electrical and Electronic Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6a5b12b6849e8770ba95e0e9c04894579233b3e7