Solidion Technology has announced that its silicon-rich anode material has passed a critical milestone test. The Company stated that its silicon/graphene anode materials have been validated by an EV OEM-appointed third party, that found that its silicon composition is on par with Silane gas-derived Si at a substantially lower cost to EV manufacturers.
The quantity of energy that a lithium-ion battery can supply to an electric vehicle (EV) is limited by the amount of charges stored in its anode and cathode materials. Although graphite has been the preferred anode material during the past 30 years, Industry-leading EV OEMs have reportedly concluded that silicon anode is required to drive EV battery technology to lower cost and provide higher energy density, significantly extending the EV driving range. Specifically, silicon (Si) is a leading-edge anode material capable of extending the EV range by 20-40%. However, the higher-capacity gain is limited by the technical issue of large volume change-induced rapid capacity decay. Additionally, most of the silicon-based anode materials have suffered from processing difficulty using current lithium-ion battery equipment and process.
Solidion has states that it has overcome these technical obstacles at its Dayton, Ohio facility manufacturing silicon anode materials. Solidion’s innovative Si anode technology has been recently validated by third-party testing, which confirms that Solidion’s silicon anode materials provide comparable performance to the best performance of any other silicon anode materials. However, all other known high-performing silicon anode materials are produced from the toxic and dangerous gas silane and are produced with chemical vapor deposition (CVD) techniques. While such CVD techniques provide many challenges and are expensive, Solidion’s silicon anode materials use an alternative process and precursor materials, so that no silane gas is used and there are no CVD processes.
EV OEMs are searching for quality silicon anode materials, and to date no silicon anode materials have achieved such comparable results without the use of silane gas and CVD processes. Further, the third party testing has revealed that Solidion’s silicon anode materials can easily be incorporated into a battery cell, which is not the case for some other silicon anode materials. Also, Solidion’s silicon anode materials have markedly better first cycle efficiency than any other silicon anode material made without silane gas and without CVD.
Solidion seeks to establish partnerships for expanding manufacturing capacity of its advanced anode materials.