Solid-State Batteries: Innovations, Promising Start-Ups, & Future Roadmap

Avicenne Energy has been forecasting technology roadmaps and trends for nearly 30 years. The rechargeable battery market has moved from Lead Acid and NiMH to a majority Lithium-Ion with substantially higher energy density from its time of launch nearly 30 years. There has been a lot of hype over high silicon anodes, lithium metal, semi solid state, solid state and now we are seeing new technologies of sodium ion and Iron/Air. The discussion will cover the advances, technology, and business model changes along with early forecasts for technologies that have made significant progress.

Batteries are a critical technology to succeed the phase out of fossil fuels and accelerate the decarbonization of our society. However, despite the significant progress made in the last decade the current batteries still are too expensive and are not capable of storing enough energy. We need more affordable batteries that need much less critical raw materials for every kWh.
If there is no significant cost reduction and much higher efficiency in the use of raw materials the wider electrification in sectors like passenger cars, heavy duty vehicles, marine or aviation will not happen despite a regulatory framework going in that direction. Simply, only end consumers with high purchasing power will be able to afford eco-friendly and sustainable products.
In that context, if the carbon neutrality ambitions of the society are maintained, the situation will widen social inequalities and set back decades of social and economic progress.

Electrolytes hold the key for enabling various battery chemistries including lithium batteries. Currently, the electrolyte based on using LiPF6 as salt and ethylene carbonate/dimethyl carbonate as solvents have been very successful for applications under normal conditions. However, extreme conditions can arise from using batteries during very cold weather or increasing the charge voltage limit to increase overall energy density. Conventional electrolytes fail under these conditions because they cannot support effective lithium ion transport across the electrolyte and the interphase. Our lab has been working on developing novel electrolyte for extreme conditions by engineering the solvent and the electrolyte additives. Taking advantage of the local synchrotron facility, we have been able to characterize the electrolyte and the interphase with techniques that are beyond the reach of lab-based tools. The obtained insight helps us to better understand the electrolyte and optimize our development. In this talk, I will give two examples of our recent efforts in this direction.

o overcome the limitations of lithium-ion batteries, new battery technologies, such as lithium and beyond lithium metal, are being investigated. However, these solutions often suffer from dendrite growth or surface passivation at the metal anode site. Carbon nanomembranes (CNMs) are an electrically insulting 2D nanomaterial that has shown its ability to conduct lithium ions and promote homogeneous ion deposition when used in conjunction with conventional separators. These properties open the possibility of using CNMs as a promising material to enable metal anodes batteries, not only by modifying the interface of separators but also of metal anodes by acting as an artificial solid electrolyte interface to prevent dendrite growth. We will discuss in this presentation the technical and economic potential of these possibilities of CNMs in next-generation batteries.

Carbon nanotubes have long been seen as an obscure, expensive and laboratory-bound material that is impossible to source in large quantities and notoriously shy about mingling with other materials (dispersion challenges). New manufacturing technologies have been developed that enable the production of carbon nanomaterials on a massive scale. Mass production and new methods for delivering these materials open the door to products that are affordable, safe to handle and easy to use. These developments are moving carbon nanotubes toward becoming an industrial commodity that will be used at scale for highly cost-sensitive applications such as cement additives and battery materials.

All-solid-state thin-film batteries combine the characteristics of solid-state batteries, such as long lifetime, ultra-fast charge/discharge and safety, and can be fabricated by physical vapour deposition (PVD) at industrial scale. The talk will present several recent highlights from Empa, including stable cycling of Li-rich NMC thin-film cathodes, carbon interlayers for anode-free configuration, and thin solid electrolyte separators. At last, we will present a monolithic stacked multi-cell battery fabricated entirely by PVD methods, which could boost specific and areal capacity and enable a new type of ultrafast rechargeable battery.

Niobium-based materials were first identified as candidates for lithium-ion anode active materials in the 1980’s. With the push for the electrification of high duty cycle applications which often exceed the performance requirements of traditional graphite-based, and lithium-titanate (LTO)-based lithium ion batteries, niobium-based materials are once again gaining attention as the anode material of choice for these applications.

Echion Technologies is leading the development of commercially available and viable niobium anode active materials for lithium ion batteries. Echion’s niobium-based anode material, XNO® delivers lithium-ion battery performance highly suited for industrial applications that demand the highest productivity and lowest total cost of ownership. Powered by XNO® means lithium-ion batteries that can safely fast charge in less than 10 minutes, maintain high energy densities even at low temperatures, and deliver high power across a cycle life of more than 10,000 cycles.

This talk shall cover the unique aspects of niobium-based anode materials in general, as well as covering the commercialisation progress of XNO®, including development, time to market, validation by cell manufacturers, and material production scale up to meet the demands of gigafactories worldwide.

Today’s wearables, hearables and other products used in space-constrained applications need a safe, fast-charging microbattery with high volumetric energy (VED) and long cycle life in the 1 milliampere-hour (mAh) to 100 mAh capacity range. This presentation will explain how anode-less solid-state lithium technology now enables the development of rechargeable microbatteries that deliver these benefits when implemented with an architecture and manufacturing approach that supports high-volume applications. The latest architecture and manufacturing approaches have removed previous barriers to solid-state technology’s adoption in microbatteries for powering an estimated one billion products shipped annually. These approaches maximize energy density while enabling end-to-end fabrication and packaging in a conventional cleanroom rather than expensive dry (zero humidity) environment. Additionally, the approaches increase VED through the use of an ultra-thin stainless steel substrate, and diced and vertically stacked packaging layers. This also enables a customizable footprint at a desired capacity, and the use of conventional metal terminals for creating a surface-mountable device that is compatible with low-temperature-reflow assembly processes. Attendees will also learn about the opportunities ahead as anode-less rechargeable solid-state lithium miocrobatteries enter the market and transform how wearable, hearable and other products are designed, manufactured and powered.