Lithium News

A Woburn, Massachusetts, company may be attracting big name attention for its solid-state technology that it says can withstand higher temperatures and offer higher capacity. For battery makers, producing a stable solid to withstand the rigors of charging and discharging has proved elusive.

Ionic Materials said in February that it had secured $65 million in funding from investors during its most recent round of fundraising. Axios reported in February that investors included electronics giant Samsung and consumer electronics maker Dyson.

Sun Microsystems and Java co-founder Bill Joy sits on Ionic’s board of directors and told Wired last year that Ionic’s solid polymer battery formula was his “black swan.”

“…I don’t have a word for this new breakthrough, a solid that conducts ions at room temperature. Maybe it should be called an ional. This is a scientific breakthrough that should receive awards,” Joy told Wired.

Ionic Materials didn’t immediately comment on the report, but in announcing the successful cash raise in February the company said it had attracted money from “companies from the battery manufacturing, consumer electronic and electric vehicle ecosystem who will be working…to speed the development of its solid polymer electrolyte battery material.”

The company’s proposed solid polymer electrolyte material could prove to be a boon for electric cars in making lithium-ion batteries store and discharge energy more safely at various temperatures.

Dyson knows the struggle to develop solid-state batteries well. Last year, the vacuum-maker and investor walked away from three patents for solid-state batteries that a Michigan-based startup developed. Dyson reportedly invested $90 million in the technology.

Following on from last weeks announcement that it intends to commercialise its unique lithium-ion battery technology, ASX listed UltraCharge has gone all in by purchasing its battery cathode technology IP from the developer, Israel based ETV Energy.

The company will pay ETV Energy USD$200,000 in cash and issue them up to 30 million fully paid ordinary shares for the technology, which will be escrowed for 12 months.

ETV can earn up to 60 million more UltraCharge shares upon the achievement of certain milestones after the initial consideration is paid.

These steps include ETV successfully applying for a patent for the technology and jointly with UltraCharge, reaching a number of commercialisation milestones.

The company has identified opportunities in defence, aviation and the increasing popular power bike market as potentially benefitting from lithium-ion battery solutions via faster charging and greater stored capacity.

UltraCharge announced in October last year, that it anticipated revenues from the sale of its manufactured batteries to be generated within 18-24 months.

The company believes its evolutionary technology could drastically reduce the time to recharge common cell phone batteries from an hour to under 6 minutes.

UltraCharge’s CEO Kobi Ben-Shabat said: “The ETV deal has been extremely significant for UltraCharge. The high voltage cathode technology has provided a critical component for our full lithium-ion battery solution.”
“We have already inked our first revenue-generating deal with Blitz based on our high-voltage lithium-ion battery technology solution and earlier this year we signed a non-binding letter of intent with Israeli-based Aeronautics Ltd to design, develop and produce battery solutions specifically for drones.”

“The market is quickly realising that our Lithium, Nickel, Manganese and Oxide (LNMO) cathode technology has great potential, because it is cobalt free and can deliver a longer lasting and more powerful battery.”
The future for lithium-ion batteries seems robust too with UltraCharge quoting an August 2017 research report, showing that the global market was forecast to reach USD$93.1b by 2025.

The market is driven by increased use in electric vehicles, portable consumer electronics and power grid storage systems.

Additionally, the unmanned aerial vehicle market is anticipated to be worth UDS$52.3b by 2025.

UltraCharge offers a fully integrated lithium-ion battery solution that relies on controlling the intellectual property rights for the anode, cathode and electrolyte components of the battery cells.

Its technology will replace graphite in the anodes with nanotube fibres made of titanium dioxide, potentially producing a battery that is safe, with a longer life and faster charging ability.

The cathode will utilise the ETV Energy high voltage LNMO technology that is potentially cheaper than the cost of other commercial cathodes because it does not require expensive cobalt to be manufactured.

As electric fat tire bicycles, or e-bikes with tires wider than 4 inches, become more popular, companies are responding to the higher demand with an increasing numbers of models. Now California-based Lithium Cycles has revamped their Super 73 line of electric bicycles and introduced the newest and most affordable member of the family, the Super 73Z.

At just $950, it is less than half the cost of other Super 73 models already offered by the company.

Lithium Cycles first introduced their Super 73 e-bike two years ago on Kickstarter, raising nearly half a million dollars to fund its production. Since then, they’ve introduced a series of different Super 73 models with varying levels of performance and accessories.

The Super 73 lineup draws inspiration from minibikes of the 70’s. As BBC Auto’s Matthew Phenix describes it:

It’s the 73’s neo-minibike form that, for a child of the 1970s whose fondest desire in all the world was to own a Honda Z50 Mini Trail, elevates this new e-bike to bona fide object-of-lust status. With fat tyres and a chunky saddle, Lithium’s debut effort is simultaneously pugnacious and whimsical — exactly the virtues that made Honda’s minibike an icon.

Fat tire bicycles aren’t new, and other successful fat tire electric bicycle Kickstarters have shipped bikes for sub $1,000 prices, but what has set the Super 73 apart has undoubtedly been its design.

Despite having fully functional pedals, the Super 73’s wide stance and low seat height helps it feel more like a moped than a true bicycle. And with a longer bench seat, carrying your friend or partner on the back looks, dare to say it, kind of cool?

American Manganese Inc. has had its US patent application for its Lithium-Ion battery recycling technology, Process of Cobaltous Sulphate/Dith-Ionate Liquors Derived from Cobalt Resource, published.

American Manganese Inc. has had its US patent application for its Lithium-Ion battery recycling technology published – Process of Cobaltous Sulphate/Dith-Ionate Liquors Derived from Cobalt Resource,.

The application is published under publication no. WO2018/089595 and is available for viewing and downloading on WIPO’s website HERE.

The product application discusses the Company’s hydrometallurgical process for the successful recycling and recovery of cathode materials such as: lithium, cobalt, nickel, manganese and aluminum from lithium ion batteries.

“Publication of the patent process takes us away from the area of a ’black box’ technology and now discloses the underlying process, which we believe will assist the Company in moving forward with potential partnerships,” said Larry W. Reaugh, C.E.O.

In its recent Business Plan the company noted that Some of the cathode metals necessary to a lithium-ion battery (cobalt, lithium, nickel, manganese, and aluminum) are projected to be in short supply and major manufacturing companies are investing billions to secure these metals.

Additionally, it said that governments are also advocating strategies to ensure such metals are sourced reliably in an environmentally friendly manner. AMY believes that the answer to sourcing sustainable, ethical, and environmentally friendly battery metals is with the Company’s lithium-ion battery recycling technology that has been recognised by global institutions.

The company concluded by adding that increasing metal prices, decreasing resource availability and environmental regulations becoming stricter, ownership of this intellectual property creates a significant global opportunity for it.

With their increasing use by the automotive industry, the need to improve the recycling of lithium-ion batteries is becoming critical.

The Lithium Battery Recycling Challenge

Increasing oil prices, demand for urban vehicles, megacities and focus on sustainable transportation have kickstarted a substantial trend towards automotive electrification such as hybrids and electric vehicles (EVs). Estimates suggest that by 2020, EVs are likely to account for more than 7% of the global transportation market.

With representatives from major tech companies and venture capital firms in the audience alongside financial backing from investors like the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance, the solid-state battery company Ionic Materials cut the ribbon on an expansion of their Woburn, Mass., battery materials fab last week.

Ionic Materials emerged from stealth mode last year, and has built out an enviable list of supporters. They say the company has pioneered a polymer electrolyte that could bring about a revolution in solid-state battery performance and safety. Prototype batteries with Ionic Materials’ solid plastic electrolyte (as opposed to the flammable liquid electrolyte found in most lithium-ion batteries today) promise higher energy densities at low cost, and use less of the rare and troublingly sourced metals such as cobalt that are found in today’s batteries.

Crucially, Ionic Materials’ batteries are also more malleable and durable, and far less prone to battery fires. A video shown on endless loop in the company’s lunchroom and touted more than once at the day’s event was a segment from an episode of PBS’s NOVA that featured Ionic Materials among other entities developing next-generation battery technology. The show’s host, David Pogue, used a pair of kitchen scissors to cut an Ionic Materials prototype battery into, as he joked, a “doily.” He later pierced another similar battery through multiple times with a screwdriver. In both cases, the battery not only did not even warm up (let alone burst into dangerous pyrotechnics as lithium ion batteries infamously do), the cut and pierced rechargeable batteries even continued to power the LED light and the iPad they were each attached to.

Pogue also delivered some remarks before the day’s ribbon cutting celebrating the opening of the company’s expanded R&D, processing, assembly, testing and prototyping facilities. He noted that Ionic Materials’ solid, plastic electrolyte prevents both battery short-circuits and dendrite formation that can lead to battery shorts. And that, he said, means that the company’s plastic electrolytes would allow for a battery made with higher energy density pure lithium anodes.

“If you can use lithium metal rather than lithium ions, you get five to ten times the energy density,” Pogue said. “That means ten days on a charge instead of one day on a charge, a thousand miles on a charge of your car instead of 200 miles.”

Ionic Materials CEO Mike Zimmerman invented the super-plastic that is both flame-retardant and electrically insulating but also conductive to ions. He said his inspiration came in the early 2000s when he saw what small and incremental improvements rechargeables made with changes to the cathodes and anodes. “I realized the electrolyte was the roadblock,” he said in his remarks at the ribbon cutting ceremony.

Afterwards, in an interview, Zimmerman said Bell Labs—where he worked for 15 years after he got out of graduate school—taught him to invent his way around that roadblock. “We invented everything, and we also had the approach of being here to solve problems, not just to identify them,” Zimmerman said.

When he first began investigating the battery electrolyte problem, Zimmerman said two possible solid electrolyte materials being discussed at the time were glasses and ceramics. (Spectrum recently profiled one such glass electrolyte discovery.) But at the time, these materials were brittle and fragile, hard to scale up, and and tended to emit toxic gases when in use. Plastics were already being used as separators between cathodes and anodes, Zimmerman said. So he figured, why not ditch the separator and the liquid electrolyte altogether. Or, in a sense, just make the plastic separator into the solid electrolyte.

Sun Microsystems founder Bill Joy, one of two named investors (along with Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi) in Ionic Materials’ latest Series C funding, said the English language doesn’t even have a word for the kind of polymer that Zimmerman made and that Ionic Materials is now manufacturing. As a battery electrolyte, the substance provides a medium through which ions travel back and forth between cathode and anode. But most electrolytes are liquids. What, Joy asked, does one call a solid that performs this task inside a battery?

“Solids that conduct electricity we call metals,” Joy said. “But we don’t have a single word for something that conducts ions at room temperature. They call it ‘room-temperature solid electrolytes.’ But they should be called ‘ionyls’ or something like that. This is one of the few buildings in the world in which there are lots of such materials.”