Energy Storage

As a global leader in energy storage research, Argonne’s cutting-edge science enables a more resilient grid, low-cost innovations in transportation and national security, longer-lasting electronic devices, and American energy leadership. 

ACCESS leverages multidisciplinary teams, world-class facilities, and powerful scientific tools to help public- and private-sector partners turn science into solutions. We work to transfer battery innovations to the marketplace, providing processes, materials, performance testing data, and finished cells to industries ranging from transportation to manufacturing. With an objective to meet a spectrum of energy storage challenges, the lab has amassed more than 250 available technologies for advanced cathode, anode, electrolyte, and additive components for lithium-ion, lithium-air, lithium-sulfur, sodium-ion, and flow batteries. Through licensing agreements with leading companies, ACCESS has spurred the construction of new plants, the creation of new jobs, and the continued growth and resilience of the U.S. advanced battery industry.

Programs and Consortia

Argonne leads the Low-cost Earth-abundant Na-ion Storage (LENS) Consortium, which aims to develop safe, inexpensive, and long-lasting sodium-ion batteries that are made from U.S. abundant materials. If optimized, sodium-ion technology can serve as an alternative to lithium-ion batteries, which depend on critical elements found predominantly outside the U.S. LENS convenes 14 partners, including six national laboratories and eight universities from across the country.

Amid rising energy demand and a reliance on critical materials for battery technologies, Argonne’s Materials Research Group is advancing earth-abundant cathode materials that are energy dense, cost-effective, durable, and supply-chain resilient. Innovations include novel cathode structures, new processing methods, engineered particle architectures, robust surfaces, fundamental insights on the design and synthesis of cathode materials and more. 

The laboratory also serves as the lead institution in the Energy Storage Research Alliance (ESRA), a DOE Energy Innovation Hub that brings together nearly 50 researchers across three national laboratories and 11 universities to enable next-generation battery materials discovery.

Argonne leads the ReCell Center, a national collaboration of industry, academia and national laboratories spearheading recycling technologies along the entire battery life-cycle for current and future battery chemistries. This endeavor aims to recover high-value materials, design processes to optimize yield, productivity and cost, and ensure future supplies of energy storage critical materials for increased national security.