Materials

Deep Insight

Cathode materials

Researchers have been announcing advances in lithium-ion cathode materials and their manufacture, as Nick Flaherty reports There are three main types lithium-ion batteries for e-mobility, all with

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Liqui Moly discusses its new EV-specific brake fluid

Liqui Moly has developed a brake fluid formulated for the unique requirements of EVs (writes Rory Jackson). While it might be assumed that the brake system at the wheels is one component that remains the same between EVs and IC engine-powered vehicles, the only significant similarity is that the brake fluid needs to be changed […]

New Products

Mercedes-Benz turns scrap tyres into door handles

Mercedes-Benz is replacing raw fossil resources with pyrolysis oil made in part from its scrap tyres. It aims to put components featuring the technology into series production in a number of its models this year. The company says it anticipates being able to chemically recycle several hundred tonnes of tyres every year and use the […]

Deep Insight

Supercapacitor applications

Supercapacitors and batteries make an ideal team, reports Peter Donaldson, who reports on how they are used in EVs Although batteries and supercapacitors both store electrical energy, they do so in very different

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Wax works well for conducting heat

Researchers in the US and China have developed an economic but efficient battery thermal management strategy using paraffin wax (writes Nick Flaherty). The 3D, interconnected, thermally conductive boron nitride network greatly improves thermal conductivity compared to random distribution. “We designed a 3D network of boron nitride, and systematically studied its effect on the thermal management […]

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SABIC cube cells pack more energy

Engineers at materials firm SABIC have patented a design for a battery pack using cuboidal cells (writes Nick Flaherty). The cells are inserted into a structural backbone made from a thermoplastic, and could increase battery pack energy density by 20% or more, with 10% more cells compared to a pack using cylindrical cells , along with […]

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AGRO explains importance of EMC-shielded cable glands

Like most small parts in complex vehicle systems, the glands that support, seal and protect the interfaces between HV cables and the components they link rarely receive the attention that the critical nature of the functions they fulfil perhaps ought to command (writes Peter Donaldson). AGRO’s EVolution EMC cable glands are a case in point, […]

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Design unveiled for 800V inverter from Texas Instruments

Texas Instruments has developed a reference design for an 800 V, 11 kW three-level, three-phase inverter using gallium nitride (writes Nick Flaherty). The inverter uses a 6.6 kW active neutral-point clamped (ANPC) inverter design with a 600 V LMG3422R030 GaN FET. This enables a switching frequency of 100 kHz to reduce the size of the […]

New Products

CATL launches cell-to-pack battery and claims highest integration level so far

CATL has announced Qilin, the third generation of its cell-to-pack technology dubbed CTP 3.0. The company says it gives a volume utilisation efficiency of 72% and an energy density of up to 255 Wh/kg, to deliver a range of more than 1000 km. In the Qilin, which is named after a legendary creature in Chinese […]

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Components keep their cool in 3D

A feasibility study has examined the use of over-moulding to create 3D electronic components with high thermal conductivity (writes Nick Flaherty). The project, at Sobaplast in Germany, uses the Keratherm MT 103 and MT 320 injection moulding materials from Kerafol on circuit board samples at temperatures that did not compromise the components on the board […]