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This paper describes a development project at Electro Energy designed to develop a high performance aircraft battery which will be suitable for use in many DoD aircraft platforms. The goal is to provide a safer high energy and power battery for aircraft energy storage systems. Aircraft batteries used on military aircraft battery platforms have a low reliability and require significant maintenance and as a result have significant costs associated with them beyond the initial procurement cost. It is desirable to develop state of the art aircraft batteries which have high reliability and minimal maintenance costs. Lithium ion cells can be employed to produce a lithium ion aircraft battery which will have significant advantages over the present nickel cadmium and lead acid aircraft batteries. The lithium ion battery will have higher specific energy, increased energy density, improved cycle life, and lower maintenance requirements.

This paper presents the test results from cells fabricated using an advanced NMC cathode incorporated into the Electro Energy wafer cell which will increase the specific energy and specific power of the completed battery. The NMC material is processed to produce a cathode with loading and porosity which will result in an electrolyte interface capable of high ionic conduction. In addition electron conductivity is enhanced by a unique coating process which provides intimate contact between the NMC and the aluminum current collector. Many cells were fabricated to determine the optimum electrode and cell parameters to optimize the energy density, specific energy, power density and specific power of the cells. Cells were subjected to rate versus temperature discharge test regimes to determine capacity at various temperatures and rates from C/2 to 40C.