SBIR/STTR Award attributes
Lookin, Inc., in collaboration with National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), proposes to develop a transformative quality control (QC) instrument, a high-throughput terahertz scanner, for in-line QC of fuel cell and electrolyzer membrane electrode assemblies (MEAs) at different stages of roll-to-roll (R2R) manufacturing. Hydrogen and fuel cell technologies provide clean, portable, high-density energy, which is useful in many settings including medium- and heavy-duty proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell vehicles and for operation in remote locations. The next big step in fuel cell industry is scaling up the manufacturing process of MEAs. As fuel cell manufacturing is a complex and precise process, it requires strict quality control to ensure the performance and safety of the final product. Therefore, an in-line quality control instrument becomes a very valuable tool that can help manufacturers achieve these goals. Such an instrument can assure high quality products by continuously monitoring critical parameters during production, can help with process optimization by identifying bottlenecks and inefficiencies during manufacturing, and can offer cost reduction by decreasing the scrap rate. There are many available techniques that can be used to characterize the substructure of fuel cells and electrolyzer MEAs, such as thermography, infrared hyperspectral imaging, or imaging techniques based on X-rays. However, these techniques are limited in their field-of-view and throughput. To address the limitations of the existing QC techniques, Lookin proposes a scanner that employs terahertz radiation for non-destructive QC of fuel cells and electrolyzer MEAs. Terahertz waves offer unique functionalities for QC applications. They can penetrate through many coatings that are non-transparent to infrared and visible light and provide 3D images of multi-layer structures. Unlike X-rays, they are non-ionizing and non- destructive. Despite these great promises, the low sensitivity and scanning speed of existing terahertz scanners have limited their usage in many practical applications. Lookin’s breakthrough terahertz scanner technology addresses the limitations of existing terahertz scanners by providing 1000-times higher sensitivity and scanning speed compared to the state-of-the art, through a patented terahertz transceiver technology developed by Lookin’s founders. During the Phase I program, Lookin will work with the NREL collaborator group, who has already investigated various techniques for in-line QC of fuel cell and electrolyzer MEAs. Lookin will build a laboratory prototype terahertz scanner, use it for analyzing various healthy and defective fuel cell and electrolyzer MEAs and their substructures, and compare the findings with those obtained by other QC techniques. By the end of the program, our team will test the feasibility of the proposed QC instrument and determine the required parameters of a field prototype terahertz scanner that can be used in R2R fuel cell manufacturing facilities for QC. During the Phase II program, Lookin plans to develop the field prototype terahertz scanner and install it in R2R manufacturing facilities of several fuel cell manufacturers to test the performance of the terahertz scanner in industrial settings. In addition, by collecting a large dataset from these experiments, Lookin will improve the accuracy of its post-processing algorithms using machine learning and statistical modeling. By enabling high-throughput and high-accuracy detection of defects in fuel cell and electrolyzer MEAs at early stages of manufacturing, our proposed instrument would be an indispensable tool for fuel cell manufacturers.
