The wonderful world of solid-state batteries has promised us everything for decades and delivered nothing of note. But all that is about to change.
Driven by the electric vehicle revolution, solid-state batteries are seeing unprecedented development. What’s the big deal? Nothing much – just a 100% charge in less than five minutes and a lifespan at least three times that of lithium-ion.
It sounds too good to be true, but Adden Energy, Inc., a startup developing innovative solid-state battery systems, has announced a lab-scale coin-cell prototype that achieves charge rates as fast as three minutes with over 10,000 cycles in a lifetime.
It also has an energy density similar to lithium-ion, giving us no range compromises and a massive speed boost.
Adden Energy aims to scale the battery technology to the production stage in the next five years, backed by Harvard University and a seed round financing of $5.15M backed by Primavera Capital Group, Rhapsody Venture Partners and MassVentures.
“Typically, lithium-metal anodes in other solid-state designs develop dendrites, twig-like growths that can gradually penetrate through the electrolyte to the cathode. We defeat the growth of dendrites before they can cause damage by novel structural and material designs,” said Luhan Ye, CTO of Adden Energy. “As a result, the device can sustain its high performance over a long lifetime. Our recent study shows that this nice feature can also be maintained at scale-up.”
Another company researching solid-state batteries is Factorial Energy, which has signed up Mercedes-Benz to drive development.
Source: Business Wire
