Blue Current Bucks Industry Trend by Delivering Steady Progress Towards a Safe, High Energy Density Solid State Battery

Blue Current Bucks Industry Trend by Delivering Steady Progress Towards a Safe, High Energy Density Solid State Battery.

Hayward, CA. Blue Current, Inc., a leader in the next phase of the all-solid-state battery (ASSB) industry, announced a series of technical achievements, expanded partner engagements, and funding. The company recognizes the significant safety, cost, and scalability challenges facing other well-known industry players, and is instead committed to delivering a full chemistry system that addresses these concerns using the same high-volume manufacturing equipment used in the traditional lithium-ion (LIB) manufacturing industry. This will enable engineers to create thinner, lighter, and lower-cost systems that were impossible before.

Blue Current continues to carefully expand its investment and industry partnerships. During 2023, new and existing investors, Koch Disruptive Technologies (KDT), Piedmont Capital, and Umicore, began or continued investment. Blue Current’s investors also include global business leaders, Alan Mulally, who served as CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes and Ford Motor Company, and Henry Kravis, co-founder of KKR, who joined as a new investor. The company is using this added funding to complete its 22,000-square-foot pilot manufacturing facility at its headquarters in Hayward, California. The pilot will be used to prove its batteries can be scaled economically using high-volume LIB manufacturing equipment.

For next-generation EVs and mobile devices to succeed, a leap forward is needed with battery technology. To achieve this, most of the industry has been working to add highly engineered (and costly) silicon anode materials to traditional LIB cells or to develop lithium metal cells paired with liquid or gel electrolytes. These approaches offer the potential for higher energy but are expensive and hard to scale. Lithium metal is also highly flammable, leading to safety concerns. To compensate, engineers must design safety at the system level with protective structures, fire-retardant materials, and complex thermal management systems. This increases product costs and limits the potential for system-level energy density improvements.

Blue Current is taking a different approach. The company’s technology addresses three critical performance vectors. It maximizes energy density through the highest possible silicon content. The need for expensive packaging material is eliminated since Blue Current’s battery cycles well at low operating pressure. Blue Current’s battery is also safe and completely dry without flammable liquid or gel electrolyte materials used in traditional LIB.

Kevin Wujcik, CTO at Blue Current, said:

It’s clear from our progress in 2023 that there is continued and growing interest to move the EV industry forward using a silicon-first approach.

“Fully dry solid electrolytes are critical to achieving high silicon content anodes. The progress we’ve made developing elastic composite electrolyte materials and enabling low pressure makes us uniquely capable of commercializing this approach, and we’re excited about the feedback we’re hearing from our partners.”

Blue Current believes that it is the first to deliver on all three of these metrics using what it refers to as a silicon-first approach with elastic composite electrolyte technology. This is evidenced by the following milestones in 2023.

• 10x higher silicon anode active material content versus state-of-the-art LIB cells while maintaining long cycle life of 1000 cycles. This enables a 50% reduction in anode thickness.
• Steady improvement in energy density with over 100 Wh/L added in 2023. Current density is comparable with LIB, and the company has a defined development path to over 900 Wh/L that’s one-third higher than state-of-the-art LIB cells.
• High cycle life achieved at pressures of 1 MPa. This is an order of magnitude lower pressure than the published research on fully dry ASSB technology and enables reduced packaging costs.
• Unique IP for low pressure operation builds on the company’s 22 patent families and associated trade secrets. This covers materials and material integration of composites.
• Ongoing safety testing shows that thermal stability is substantially higher than traditional LIB battery cells. This includes ARC, crush, DSC, nail penetration, and overcharge testing.

Ben Eiref, CEO at Blue Current, said:

We hear all the time from customers who tell us that safety equals increased cost at the pack and system level and that they need batteries that are both safe and energy dense simultaneously.

“This was our vision from the start. We see a future where batteries are fully dry and inherently safe by default and powered by silicon, the most abundant material on earth.”

In 2023, Blue Current doubled its team of chemists and advanced manufacturing experts with key hires with prior background at Cal-tech, Tesla, PPG, QuantumScape, SilaNano, Stanford, and Rivian. It also completed a series of evaluation projects with global industry partners. Blue Current is excited to expand its relationships with global material suppliers, manufacturers, and customers focusing on safe and high-performance battery technology. Interested parties are invited to meet at the Advanced Automotive Battery Conference (AABC) in San Diego, Dec 11-14, or schedule a time to meet in January 2024.

READ the latest Batteries News shaping the battery market

Blue Current Bucks Industry Trend by Delivering Steady Progress Towards a Safe, High Energy Density Solid State Battery. source