Scaling Up Pilot Production of Nanoporous Membranes for Battery Storage Technologies

This project’s intent is to scale-up production of an advance battery membrane platform for market facilitation of safe, low-cost, and energy-dense batteries. The advancement to pilot low rate initial production will establish multiple market

star

Tech Partner

Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Low Carbon Transportation Advanced EV Battery Technologies

Sepion Technologies, Inc.

Recipient

Emeryville, CA

Recipient Location

9th

Senate District

15th

Assembly District

beenhere

$2,588,552

Amount Spent

refresh

Active

Project Status

Download Project

Project Update

In 2021, the team closed an oversubscribed Series A, increased in-house pouch cell fabrication throughput 5-fold, and increased cell capacity by 75-fold with a prototyping partner. In addition, the team grew the coating team, hired a VP of Operations, and increased membrane coating throughput 2-fold. In 2022, the team added a VP of Business Development to lead their strategic customer and partner engagements, while also improving their cell performance by another 250% to further validate its long-life, low-cost and fast-charge value proposition under EV-relevant testing.

In 2023, the team plans to complete build-out and move-in to its new prototyping facility, which is expected to enable a 100X increase in their polymer synthesis capability, 1000X increase in separator coating capacity, and an ability to make up to 10Ah Li-Metal battery cells in-house, as they continue to fulfill sample requests from major Automotive OEMs, battery makers and raw material suppliers worldwide.

The Issue

Batteries, charged with clean renewable energy, are poised to be the 21st century's zero-carbon solution to fossil fuel combustion, powering everything from electric vehicles to the electric grid. In order remove barriers to large-scale adoption and meet the expected increased demand for EVs, battery life, range and cost must be optimized. Current lithium batteries suffer from degradation over extended use periods, vulnerabilities to thermal runaway, and a dependence on rare-earth metals, such as cobalt, sourced from conflict ridden areas of the planet.

Project Innovation

The purpose of this project is to scale-up the production of an advanced battery membrane platform for market facilitation of safe, low-cost, and energy-dense batteries. The proposed approach is to establish optimal processes for each key component of the innovative membrane (polymer, polymer ink, and roll-to-roll coating) to generate quality assurance and quality control metrics that will lead to an in-house low rate initial production of the membrane for batteries. The intent is to establish a steady commercialized platform technology that will create multiple market opportunities in a variety of battery chemistries. The innovative membrane, in addition to improving the cycle life of batteries, enables more energy to be extracted from the same cathodes used under previously abusive conditions, operate at elevated temperatures, and allows use of more abundant materials such as manganese instead of cobalt.

Project Benefits

The nanoporous membrane platform opens paths to safely increasing Li-metal battery energy density by 40%, dropping the cost below $100/kWh while developing manufacturing capabilities for advanced battery components in California. This technology can be integrated with existing Li-metal battery manufacturing infrastructure to reduce barriers to market entry. Beyond Li-metal batteries, this platform membrane technology is already being leveraged to enable breakthroughs in Li-metal batteries for advanced electric vehicles with greater than 350 mile range and ultra-low-cost flow batteries for long-duration grid storage, multiplying the potential for impact.

Affordability

The innovative membrane resulting from this project will allow the elimination of cobalt (the largest cost factor) and the use of cheaper materials to reduce cost of Li-ion batteries that will also offer increased life, reliabili

Economic Development

This start-up company has been able to increase their company growth and hire 3 more skilled-labor employees since the start of the grant. The company is anticipating hiring 35 addition skilled-labor workers by the end for the gr