Imperial joins €19.95M European project to accelerate battery innovation

Imperial College London has been awarded £962,928 as part of FULL-MAP, a major new European-funded initiative.

FULL-MAP aims to revolutionize battery research through Artificial Intelligence (AI), automation, and high-throughput experimentation. 

The project—FULLy integrated, autonomous & chemistry-agnostic Materials Acceleration Platform for sustainable batteries (FULL-MAP)—brings together leading European institutions to dramatically speed up the discovery and optimization of next-generation battery materials.  

Imperial researchers from the Department of Chemical Engineering, Department of Materials and Dyson School of Design Engineering will play a pivotal role in developing automated laboratory processes and AI-driven decision-making tools to accelerate the development of high-performance, sustainable battery technologies. 
 
The project will run from February 2025 to July 2028, with a total budget of €19.95 million.

Transforming battery development 

Battery technology is critical to achieving net-zero emissions, supporting clean transport, energy storage, and industrial decarbonization. However, developing new battery materials has traditionally relied on a slow, trial-and-error approach—taking up to a decade for new discoveries to reach commercial application. 

FULL-MAP aims to develop this area by: 

• Automated synthesis and testing to dramatically speed up material discovery 
• AI-powered multi-scale simulations to predict material properties and optimize designs 
• High-throughput characterization of battery performance at multiple levels, from materials to full cells 

The DIGIBAT facility, located at Imperial’s Department of Chemical Engineering, will provide an automated research environment for battery innovation. It will integrate automated materials synthesis, electrode fabrication, coin cell assembly, and electrochemical testing—streamlining the entire experimental workflow.  

Imperial College London has been awarded £962,928 as part of FULL-MAP, a major new European-funded initiative.

FULL-MAP aims to revolutionize battery research through Artificial Intelligence (AI), automation, and high-throughput experimentation. 

The project—FULLy integrated, autonomous & chemistry-agnostic Materials Acceleration Platform for sustainable batteries (FULL-MAP)—brings together leading European institutions to dramatically speed up the discovery and optimization of next-generation battery materials.  

Imperial researchers from the Department of Chemical Engineering, Department of Materials and Dyson School of Design Engineering will play a pivotal role in developing automated laboratory processes and AI-driven decision-making tools to accelerate the development of high-performance, sustainable battery technologies. 
 
The project will run from February 2025 to July 2028, with a total budget of €19.95 million.

Transforming battery development 

Battery technology is critical to achieving net-zero emissions, supporting clean transport, energy storage, and industrial decarbonization. However, developing new battery materials has traditionally relied on a slow, trial-and-error approach—taking up to a decade for new discoveries to reach commercial application. 

FULL-MAP aims to develop this area by: 

• Automated synthesis and testing to dramatically speed up material discovery 
• AI-powered multi-scale simulations to predict material properties and optimize designs 
• High-throughput characterization of battery performance at multiple levels, from materials to full cells 

The DIGIBAT facility, located at Imperial’s Department of Chemical Engineering, will provide an automated research environment for battery innovation. It will integrate automated materials synthesis, electrode fabrication, coin cell assembly, and electrochemical testing—streamlining the entire experimental workflow.  

DIGIBAT will enable rapid screening and optimization of new battery materials, accelerating their transition from lab-scale discovery to real-world application. 

Professor Magda Titirici, lead academic on the project said, “I am thrilled to be part of this exciting cutting age project which will accelerate new and more sustainable battery technologies development combining robotic synthetic and electrochemical tools with fundamental science such as advanced characterization, physical based models and AI tools for inverse discovery and digital twins. I am excited that our battery acceleration platform, DIGIBAT, is part of this exciting research programme within the battery 2030 framework.” 

Dr Sam Cooper, lead researcher from the Dyson School of Design Engineering stated, “FULL-MAP will build off the impressive legacy of the BIG-MAP project, but so much has happened in the AI world in the past 5 years that the ways in which it can be applied to accelerating materials design has radically changed and expanded.”  

Driving battery technology 

FULL-MAP’s modular and scalable approach will enable researchers to rapidly test new battery materials and optimize performance in real-world conditions. By integrating computational and experimental methods with AI, Big Data, Autonomous Synthesis, and High-Throughput Testing, FULLMAP aims to fast-track the development and deployment of next-generation materials and batteries, significantly advancing sustainable battery technology. 

Professor Ifan Stephens from the Department of Materials added:

“At Imperial, with our strengths in electrochemistry and materials synthesis, along with our excellent centralised facilities (including DIGIBAT, cryomicroscopy, the electrochemistry suite at Royce at Imperial) we are ideally placed to conduct this research. The data driven approach adopted by FULLMAP is the way forward to address the complex chemistries posed by battery development and discovery.”

Funding

FULL-MAP is funded under the Horizon Europe program and brings together leading academic and industrial partners across Europe.