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New 18650 lithium battery 3000mah technology could make electric cars cheaper

Sila Nanotech has made double-digit performance gains in lithium-ion batteries, promising to reduce costs or increase features in cars and phones. For the past seven years, the Alameda, California-based startup has quietly developed a new anode material that promises to significantly boost lithium-ion battery performance.

Sila Nanotech emerged from stealth mode last month with a partnership with BMW to put the company’s silicon-based anode materials in at least some of the German automaker’s electric vehicles by 2023. A BMW spokesman told The Wall Street Journal that the company expects the deal to result in a 10 to 15 percent increase in the amount of energy that can be packed into a given volume of battery. The materials could eventually yield as much as a 40 percent improvement, said Sila CEO Gene Berdichevsky.

For electric vehicles, the increase in so-called energy density will either significantly extend the range that can be driven on a single charge or reduce the cost of the batteries needed to achieve a standard range. For consumer electronics, it could alleviate the annoyance of phones that can’t make it through the day, or could enable more power-hungry next-generation features like more powerful cameras or ultra-fast 5G networks.

Researchers have spent decades improving the performance of lithium-ion batteries, but those gains have amounted to only a few percentage points at a time. So how did Sila Nanotechnologies achieve such a huge leap?

Berdichevsky, who was employed as Tesla's seventh employee, and Gleb Yushin, a professor of materials science at Georgia Tech, recently provided a more in-depth explanation of battery technology in an interview with MIT Technology Review.

The anode is the negative terminal of a battery, in this case, storing lithium ions when the battery is charged. Engineers have long believed that silicon has great potential as an anode material for a simple reason: It can bind to 25 times more lithium ions than lithium, the main material currently used in lithium-ion batteries.

But this poses a big problem. When silicon holds many lithium ions, its volume expands, which can stress the material in ways that can easily break it apart during charging. This expansion can also trigger electrochemical side reactions that degrade battery performance.

In 2010, Yushin co-authored a Science paper that identified a method for producing rigid silicon-based nanoparticles with enough pores inside to accommodate significant volume changes. He teamed up with Berdichevsky and another former Tesla battery engineer, Alex Jacobs, to form Sila the following year.

The company has since been working to commercialize that basic concept, developing, producing and testing tens of thousands of increasingly complex anode nanoparticles of various kinds. It figured out ways to change the internal structure to prevent the battery electrolyte from seeping into the particles, and it achieved dozens of incremental increases in energy density, ultimately about 20 percent better than the best existing technology.

Ultimately, Sila created a solid, micron-sized spherical particle with a porous core that directs most of the swelling in the internal structure. The outside of the particle doesn’t change shape or size during charging, ensuring proper performance and cycle life.

The resulting composite anode powder is used as an embedded material for existing lithium-ion battery manufacturers.

With any new battery technology, it takes at least five years to go through the quality and safety assurance processes of the automotive industry, so it fits in with BMW’s 2023 timeline. But Sila’s work with the consumer electronics sector is speeding up the process, and it expects that there could be products with battery materials on shelves by early next year.

Venkat Viswanathan, a mechanical engineer at Carnegie Mellon, says Sila is “making great progress.” But he cautions that progress in one battery metric often comes at the expense of others, such as safety, charge time or cycle life. What works in the lab doesn’t always translate perfectly to the final product.

Companies including Enovix and Enevate are also developing silicon-based anode materials. Meanwhile, other companies are pursuing completely different routes to higher-capacity storage, particularly solid-state batteries. These use materials such as glass, ceramics or polymers to replace liquid electrolytes, which help carry lithium ions between the cathode and anode.

BMW is also working with Solid Power at the University of Colorado Boulder, which claims its solid-state technology, which relies on lithium metal anodes, can store two to three times more energy than conventional lithium-ion batteries. Meanwhile, Ionic Materials, which recently raised $65 million from Dyson and others, has developed a solid polymer electrolyte that it says will enable safer and cheaper batteries that operate at room temperature and can also work with lithium metal.

Some battery experts believe that solid-state technology could eventually achieve greater gains in energy density if researchers can overcome some large remaining technical hurdles.

But Berdichevsky stressed that Sila’s material is product-ready today and, unlike solid-state lithium metal batteries, won’t require any expensive equipment upgrades from battery makers.

As the company develops more ways to limit the volume changes of silicon-based particles, Berdichevsky and Yushin believe they will be able to further expand energy density while also improving charging times and overall cycle life.

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