Critical Resources (ASX: CRR) has received co-funding to support a collaborative research project with Australia's national science agency, the CSIRO, aimed at advancing the scale-up of Dry Supersonic Deposition (DSD) battery technology.

DSD can fabricate mechanically robust and electrochemically active lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cathodes without the use of solvents or polymer binders. The project is directed at the optimisation and scaling of the DSD manufacturing process, which sits at the centre of CRR's licensable battery manufacturing intellectual property.

In conventional lithium-ion cell production, cathodes are made by coating a slurry of active material, solvent and polymer binder onto metal foil, then drying the electrode and recovering the solvent — stages that rank among the most energy- and capital-intensive parts of a cell plant. Dry, solvent-free coating routes are an active area of industry research as manufacturers seek to cut production cost, energy use and plant complexity, provided such processes can be run repeatably at scale.

CSIRO will apply its Digital Twin capability to optimise and de-risk that process and to deliver technical recommendations for further optimisation, development and, if successful, the scale-up of the process. A digital twin is a virtual replica of a physical process, allowing variables and failure modes to be tested in simulation before capital is committed to physical trials.

The project will use CSIRO's modelling capability to visualise, analyse and optimise the supersonic deposition process CRR is developing for battery cathode and electrolyte manufacture. Simulations will be generated from the company's own process parameters, including multiple process variables for the DSD process.

Solid-state battery designs — which replace the liquid electrolyte used in conventional cells with solid conductive material, in pursuit of greater safety and energy density — remain one of the industry's most closely watched frontiers.

"The battery industry has no shortage of promising chemistry. What it is short of is chemistry that can be manufactured at cost, at scale and repeatably – and that, more than materials performance, is what holds solid-state battery architecture back," Managing Director Tim Wither said.

"With South Dakota Mines and now CSIRO we are finding solutions on both sides: the materials and the manufacturing.

"Our focus at this stage is to develop the process knowledge: the patent position, the data, and the engineering understanding a potential cell manufacturer needs to run it.

"Peer review has established that DSD works. What comes next is knowing where the operating window sits, what causes defects, and how the process behaves at scale. CSIRO's digital twin capability answers those questions by modelling rather than by spending money and time on trial after trial, and it brings world-class expertise and facilities to the DSD process."

Under the project, CSIRO will undertake work across four areas:

• Digital twin construction and visualisation: build a three-dimensional virtual model of the spray nozzle assembly and deposition environment, and simulate gas flow behaviour, particle trajectories, particle velocity and temperature distributions, and supersonic shock wave locations.
• Powder and particle size distribution assessment: integrate CRR's particle size distribution data into the digital twin framework, analyse particle velocity across the size range, visualise impact conditions, estimate deposition efficiency and assess particle-size-dependent bonding behaviour.
• Advanced analytics and defect-mechanism work: identify conditions contributing to defect formation, cracking or poor inter-particle bonding, and run hypothetical simulations to evaluate potential process improvements.
• Recommendations and reporting: deliver technical recommendations for future optimisation, experimental validation and scale-up, together with a comprehensive final report.

The program is built to culminate in that final workstream, whose recommendations and comprehensive final report will frame any subsequent move toward experimental validation and, if successful, scale-up of the DSD process.

CRR shares were steady at 0.6¢, with the company carrying a market capitalisation of $19.16 million.

The material is provided for information only and should not be treated as investment advice; readers are encouraged to conduct their own research.