New technology is coming down the pike that could have a major effect on the battery systems put into our ubiquitous devices.
Today Cade Metz at the Seattle Times talks about a startup company called Sila and its provision of battery hardware to the company making the Whoop fitness tracker, a small wearable.
Sila, Metz writes, is able to accommodate this tiny footprint. The difference from traditional lithium-ion batteries? It’s a silicon powder that creates a silicon-based anode replacing traditional graphite anode design.
“While that may not sound earth-shattering, Sila’s battery is part of a wave of new battery technologies that could lead to novel designs in consumer electronics and help accelerate the electrification of cars and airplanes,” Metz writes. “They may even help store electricity on the power grid, lending a hand to efforts to reduce dependence on fossil fuels.”
In talking about the history of this technology, Metz reports that firms like Enovix, QuantumScape, Solid Power and Sila have been working on this type of new battery for a decade, and hope to have reached new design and implementation benchmarks by 2025. Metz also points out how the CEO of Sila has experience at Tesla working with electric vehicles.
“Sila’s CEO and co-founder, Gene Berdichevsky, was an early Tesla employee who oversaw battery technology as the company built its first electric car,” Metz writes. “Berdichevsky left Tesla in 2008 to work on what eventually became Sila.”
Lithium-ion technology, Metz writes, seemed to have “plateaued” – but now there’s every indication that silicon anode technology will supercharge the ability of innovators to create even better and more efficient batteries.
“In the last 10 years, silicon has attracted a lot of attention as a high-capacity negative electrode for rechargeable batteries,” says Sulin Zhang, professor of engineering science and mechanics and of biomedical engineering, in a statement published by Penn State News on local innovation. “Current commercialized batteries use graphite as an anode material, but the capacity of silicon is about 10 times of graphite. There are tens of millions, hundreds of millions even, of dollars invested in silicon battery research because of this.”
Keep an eye out for new LiO battery designs.
