Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

This project aims at developing a flexible coating line for functional polymers onto varying substrates with high precision and inline quality control. This coating line allows producing novel hydrocarbon membranes that outperform state-of-the-art membranes in both, performance and durability, for numerous electrochemical devices. The substrate-flexibility of the coating and the envisioned inline quality control based on Raman-laser enable an on-demand production customized to the application - from electrolysis, next-generation Li-Ion batteries and fuel cells to water desalination. The five project partners cover all expertise along the process chain necessary to develop such a coating line - from polymer synthesis and dispersion formulation to the coating process, process automation and inline measurement. Additive manufacturing, customized production and inline quality control are what make this project part of a future industry 4.0/advanced manufacturing.. The proposal partners the materials science and fuel cell expertise at Simon Fraser University, with internationally-leading, materials scientists at the Hahn-Schickard-Gesellschaft fuer angewandte Forschung e.V., and the manufacturing and coating expertise at Ionomr Innovations Inc. and Jakob Weiß & Söhne Maschinenfabrik GmbH. The Canadian efforts focus on the design and implementation of novel ion-conducting polymers and coating dispersions for high precision integration into flexible coating lines.