Super anode proposal

Project completed by Future Battery Industries CRC which receives allocation of MRIWA funds.

The Challenge

The Super Anode Project aimed to develop advanced anode materials to support Australia’s growing battery industry. Key objectives included benchmarking Australian graphite performance, reducing natural graphite wastage, enhancing silicon anode performance to 1000 mAh/g, and completing a full life cycle analysis of natural graphite-based anodes. 

Key Findings 

The project delivered significant contributions by establishing Australia-based capability for anode development, offering differentiated cost-performance advantages, and fostering economic growth through job creation and investment. Potential applications span across anode development for lithium-ion and sodium-ion batteries, conductive coatings, and supercapacitors.  

Benefit to WA

The Super Anode project has value-added to the Western Australian graphite-economy via the development of superior capacity graphitic anodes in battery manufacturing. The biggest opportunity is in the value addition to convert graphite concentrate into refined, spheronised and siliconised anode material of the desired particle size distribution, shape, silicon content and purity.

DOI

Glass, D., Pathirana, T., Yan, S., Best, A.S., Parsa, M., Ellis, A.V. (2025) Increasing the yields of natural flake graphite spheronization with the NARA hybridization system Advanced Powder Technology 36, 12, 105115. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apt.2025.105115 

Fronzi. M., Ellis, A.V., Goudeli, E. (2025) Quantum-assisted machine learning screening for sustainable anode discovery in lithium-ion batteries, Journal of Power Sources, 652: 237347. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpowsour.2025.237347  

Fronzi, M, Mele, P., Ellis, A.V., Stampfl, C. (2025) Advances in van der Waals thermoelectric materials: Prospects and challenges, RSC Applied Interfaces https://doi.org/10.1039/D4LF00383G  

Pham, T.K., Snook, G., Glass, D, Ellis, A.V. (2025) Lithium-ion diffusion behaviour in silicon nanoparticle/graphite blended anodes, Journal of Power Sources 638: 236623. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpowsour.2025.236623  

Fronzi. M., Ellis, A.V., Goudeli, E. (2023) Silicon-based anodes for Li batteries: Thermodynamics, structural analysis, and Li diffusion, Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters 14: 10388-10395 https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jpclett.3c02585