A123/Solid Power Partnership – A Safe Bet?

Dean Sigler Batteries, Electric Aircraft Components, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

A123 Systems has worked with buffering chemistries to reduce the volatility of lithium batteries for the last decade.  Solid Power Inc. has taken a set of interesting new technologies to make batteries more energy dense and safer.   The two companies are combining efforts to make a more powerful, less-volatile battery, according to recent press releases. A123 produces nanophosphate (lithium iron phosphate – LiFePO4) and ultraphosphate batteries.  Their nanophosphate batteries are used in Porsche’s 919 hybrid, a LeMans Prototype (LMP1) endurance racer that was outright winner of the event this year.  They also power Eva Hakansson’s Killajoule and Bill Dube’s Killacycle – both record-holding electric motorcycles.  Their Ultraphosphate line is designed to work at low voltages and low temperatures, including 48-Volt mild hybrid applications.   Solid Power, a startup based on research done at University of Colorado Boulder, combines (“an exceptionally”) high-capacity cathode with a high-capacity lithium metal anode and a high ionic capacity solid separator.  This combination produces, according to …

Yi Cui and team Devise a 10X Anode

Dean Sigler Batteries, Electric Aircraft Components, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

Batteries are complex things to design and make, with materials scientists and chemists facing unlimited numbers of options for materials choices, formulations and proportions, and manufacturing techniques that will make hoped-for performance attainable on a commercial level. Yi Cui and a distinguished array of undergraduate and graduate students at Stanford University have written 320 academic research papers since 2000, with the rate of publication seeming to increase every year. To put icing on that multi-layered cake, Dr. Cui has helped found his own battery company, Amprius, using his depth of knowledge to take batteries in directions interesting enough to draw the attention of well-known investors – including Stanford.  The only recent information on the web site today shows the firm is looking for a battery scientist and a battery engineer. His academic and research work continue, though, with his latest efforts producing a turn away from his work with silicon – ,making a novel lithium/carbon electrode with extremely high volumetric …

EAS VIII: Ultra High Energy Density Lithium Battery

Dean Sigler Electric Powerplants, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

Qichao Hu is ​Cofounder, President and interim CEO of SolidEnergy, a battery company with a different technology and a unique business plan.  According to his company’s web site, he “Cofounded SolidEnergy while a PhD student at MIT, and led it through early stage business plan competition, fundraising, licensing and collaboration negotiation, and technology development. 2012 Forbes 30 Under 30 in Energy, and is a graduate of MIT and Harvard University.”  His team was also the Deployment and Infrastructure Category Winner in the 2012 MIT Clean Energy Prize competition. In his presentation to the eighth annual Electric Aircraft Symposium on April 25, Hu told about his Waltham, Massachusetts startup’s strategic partnership with A123, the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory.  The firm’s laboratory and intellectual depth enables creating a battery that is safer, lighter and smaller, as Hu told attendees at the Symposium. Solid Energy Systems Corp. is now affiliated with A123 Venture Technologies Corp.  This allows Hu and his …