Toward Green Battery Cells: Perspective on Materials and Technologies

TLDR

Advanced rechargeable batteries prioritize cost, performance, safety, and lifetime, with lithium‑ion technology currently meeting key electromobility demands while growing attention shifts toward life‑cycle sustainability. This review surveys greener battery development strategies across the full life cycle, focusing on lithium‑ion systems and assessing alternative chemistries for sustainability and competitiveness. The authors conduct a critical review of green battery approaches, evaluating material choices and alternative chemistries across the life cycle.

Abstract

Abstract Research and development of advanced rechargeable battery technologies is dominated by application‐specific targets, which predominantly focus on cost and performance targets, including high gravimetric energy, volumetric energy, and related power densities, while ensuring a high safety and long lifetime. The need for high‐performance and low‐cost batteries is driven by the growing market of electromobility, in order to fulfill key requirements, such as a sufficient driving range and fast charging ability, for achieving broad consumer acceptance. Currently, the lithium ion battery (LIB) is one of the state‐of‐the‐art technologies able to meet most of these key requirements at a reasonable cost. In addition to performance and costs, the environmental impact, i.e., the sustainability of the battery and in particular of the battery cell over the whole life cycle—i.e., from raw material extraction and battery material production, to cell and battery pack production, battery utilization, and to possibilities for second life usage and recycling—does receive continuously increasing attention. Within this review, different approaches for the development of “greener” batteries are introduced with a view on the complete battery life cycle, while focusing on the LIB technology. Moreover, alternative battery technologies are critically evaluated regarding their sustainability aspects and competitiveness.