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Li-ion Battery Safety: CEA Joins a New European Project


​The SAGELi project was launched on January 1, 2025 with the aim of developing safer and more sustainable lithium-ion batteries, especially for electric vehicles. This initiative is particularly significant with regard to the transition toward decarbonized mobility, where the safety, performance, and environmental impact of accumulators are major issues.

Published on 10 July 2025

​Making high-energy batteries safer

Nickel-, manganese- and cobalt-based (NMC) lithium-ion technologies have now set the market benchmark for high-energy density batteries, but despite offering excellent electrochemical performance, they also raise critical safety concerns.
Faults or defects may cause NMC cells to experience thermal runaway, due to material degradation of the positive electrode and the release of inflammable gases. The SAGELi project seeks to resolve this issue by exploring new positive electrode materials which are less susceptible to this kind of phenomenon.

Exploring innovative materials to mitigate these critical concerns

Project partners have focused their efforts on two classes of promising materials, both of which are manganese oxide-based:

  • Lithium-rich oxides capable of providing competitive energy density while also improving thermal stability;
  • Nickel-free cation-disordered rock-salt materials (cDRS), with the aim being to move away from this critical metal while also maintaining the performance required to meet mobility needs.

CEA is drawing on more than ten years' expertise

CEA-Liten has been working for more than ten years on the synthesis, characterization, and integration of these new active materials. This vast experience will be harnessed during the SAGELi project and applied to producing and studying prototype cells that integrate these new cathodes.

CEA will use a unique thermal runaway evaluation tool, dubbed Flash Thermal Test, to assess the thermal stability of these cells. This innovative experimental device allows for the thermal behavior of very small quantities of electrochemical materials to be analyzed, while also enabling results to be extrapolated on a full-cell scale. It will therefore provide valuable insight into the aging and safety of materials throughout their life cycle. 

​A strategic contribution to the battery of tomorrow

Through its involvement in the SAGELi project, CEA has reaffirmed its commitment to developing safer, more sustainable and more competitive batteries, to support the energy transition.
Our R&D infrastructure and unrivalled expertise in battery materials will play an integral role in overcoming the safety and sustainability concerns over lithium-ion batteries.

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