Design of an Automated Assembly Station for Process Development of All-Solid-State Battery Cell Assembly

Today, lithium-ion batteries are a promising technology in the evolution of electro mobility, but still have potential for improvement in terms of performance, safety and cost. In order to exploit this potential, one promising approach is the replacement of liquid electrolyte with solid-state electrolyte and the use of lithium metal electrode as an anode instead of graphite based anodes. Solid-state electrolytes and the lithium metal anode have favorable electrochemical properties and therefore enable significantly increased energy densities with inherent safety. However, these materials are both, mechanically and chemically sensitive. Therefore, material-adapted processes are essential to ensure quality-assured manufacturing of all-solid-state lithium-ion battery cells. This paper presents the development of a scaled and flexible automated assembly station adapted to the challenging properties of the new all-solid-state battery materials. In the station various handling and gripping techniques are evaluated and qualified for assembly of all-solid-state battery cells. To qualify the techniques, image processing is set up as a quality measurement technology. The paper also discusses the challenges of enclosing the entire assembly station in inert gas atmosphere to avoid side reactions and contamination of the chemically reactive materials.

Automated assembly scaffolding elevates a new tomato system for high-throughput genome editing

Advancing crop genomics requires efficient genetic systems enabled by high-quality personalized genome assemblies. Here, we introduce RagTag, a toolset for automating assembly scaffolding and patching, and we establish chromosome-scale reference genomes for the widely used tomato genotype M82 along with Sweet-100, a rapid-cycling genotype that we developed to accelerate functional genomics and genome editing. This work outlines strategies to rapidly expand genetic systems and genomic resources in other plant species.

Trycycler: consensus long-read assemblies for bacterial genomes

While long-read sequencing allows for the complete assembly of bacterial genomes, long-read assemblies contain a variety of errors. Here, we present Trycycler, a tool which produces a consensus assembly from multiple input assemblies of the same genome. Benchmarking showed that Trycycler assemblies contained fewer errors than assemblies constructed with a single tool. Post-assembly polishing further reduced errors and Trycycler+polishing assemblies were the most accurate genomes in our study. As Trycycler requires manual intervention, its output is not deterministic. However, we demonstrated that multiple users converge on similar assemblies that are consistently more accurate than those produced by automated assembly tools.