Due to cheaper cost, ease of production and environmental benefits, battery makers and electric vehicle manufacturers have long pursued dry processes for building electrodes.
A new dry-processed electrode architecture from the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (UChicago PME) demonstrates a fourth benefit: better performance.
Their results were published today in Nature Energy .
“The economic, environmental and societal concerns were what was pushing dry-electrode technology forward,” said UChicago PME Research Associate Professor Minghao Zhang, the first author of the new paper. “Our work shows that, not only does the dry method deliver those advantages, but it also improves the performance of battery itself. The battery is more robust, it can deliver a thicker electrode with better conductivity, and it cycles better at high voltage, all of which is quite surprising.”
Electrode is the term for both ends of the battery, both the anode where current flows in and the cathode where current flows out. Traditionally, all the materials and chemicals that go into an electrode are mixed into a slurry, coated onto a foil current collector and then dried using toxic solvents.
Ideally, this wet mixing creates a uniform material, but the process is costly, harmful and less effective with the increase of the electrode thickness.
“The dry electrode is the next generation, the cutting-edge technology in lithium-ion batteries,” Zhang said. “Making electrodes through so-called ‘slurry process’ is not only complicated, but also has a lot of environmental concern. That’s why all the big companies in this area are trying to replace the slurry method with the completely dry method.”
The work, which also involved researchers from the University of California San Diego, the Université de Picardie Jules Verne and Thermo Fisher Scientific, was led by UChicago PME Liew Family Professor Shirley Meng’s Laboratory for Energy Storage and Conversion .
“Not only does this research bring us closer to fast-charging, high-efficiency, powerful EV batteries, but it advances pure science,” said Meng , the lead corresponding author of the new work. “It shows how inactive materials within the electrode previously thought to work independently of each other actually create a synergistic effect that makes this not only a powerful battery, but a stable one, both structurally and chemically.”
Unique coupling discovered
Any electrode, whether made through a slurry or dry process, has three components. The active materials provide the electrodes’ energy density. The conductive additive – normally carbon-based – provide the electrodes’ conductivity. And the binders provide the electrodes’ mechanical strength, holding it together.
“Traditionally, people think the carbon and binder materials act their roles independently,” Zhang said. “We found that in the dry process, there is synergetic effect between the binder and the carbon additive. Due to this unique chemical interaction, the conductive network is much better connected in the dry process compared with the slurry process.”
This unique coupling between the carbon and the binder also helps the battery cycle at high voltage, avoiding many of the side reactions slurry-made batteries see at those levels.
“What we found out is the side reactions at high voltages are rooted in the carbon additive because that component is so reactive. But due to this synergistic effect, the binder – which is not reactive at all – coated or partially coated on the carbon surface, so it basically reduces the reactivity of the carbon and the side reactions at high voltage. So the battery can cycle very well at high voltage with very minimal side reactions.”
The result was both surprising and potentially transformative.
“Dry electrodes can make the process simplified, but we never imagined before this work that it also has a unique contribution for high voltage stability cycling,” Zhang said. “That will also add up to the future energy density improvement of the batteries.”
The team hopes next to further optimize the microstructures of the electrode, so that the lithium ion inside the electrode can conduct – and the EV charge – even faster.
“We're trying to push the charging time as close to that of gasoline,” Zhang said.
The UChicago end of the work was funded through the University of Chicago Energy Transition Network (ETN), an industry/academic consortium that is part of the university’s Institute for Climate and Sustainable Growth .
“Industry and academia must work together to advance these vital climate solutions,” said Meng, who is also ETN co-director. “The world’s best batteries cannot be laboratory novelties. We need our industry partners to put these powerful technologies in the hands of the people who need them.”
Citation: “Dry electrode architecture design to push energy density limits at the cell level,” Zhang et al, Nature Energy, February 18, 2026. DOI: 10.1038/s41560-026-01981-3
Nature Energy
Dry electrode architecture design to push energy density limits at the cell level
18-Feb-2026