Graphene batteries

Graphene Manufacturing Group (GMG) will issue roughly 6.5 million shares to a private investor at CA$2.15 (about US$1.53) each in a private placement raising approximately US$10 million. The raise is subject to TSX Venture Exchange approval and is expected to close on or about September 23, 2026.

GMG said it intends to use the net proceeds to scale up its graphene and liquid graphene production capacity, expand battery cell production capacity, commercialize its liquid graphene products, and for working capital and general corporate purposes.

COnovate (formerly SafeLi), a Wisconsin-based battery materials company, has been awarded a $1.25 million, 24-month development contract by the U.S. Department of Energy's Critical Minerals and Materials Accelerator Program to scale commercial-scale production of its eCOphite anode material. The award is administered under the DOE's Office of Critical Minerals and Energy Innovation, AMMTO Award Number DE-EE0011730.

eCOphite is built on graphene monoxide (GmO), a 2D crystalline solid with a roughly 1:1 carbon-to-oxygen ratio, formed by thermally reducing graphene oxide. Rather than retaining graphene's pure carbon hexagonal lattice, GmO's atoms rearrange into a different, lower-symmetry crystal structure - making it a distinct material in the graphene family. The company positions eCOphite as an additive that can be used alongside existing anode materials rather than a wholesale graphite replacement, produced domestically from bio-renewable feedstocks without mining.

Researchers at the University of Southern Queensland (UniSQ), led by Professor Ashok Kumar Nanjundan, have been awarded A$1.3 million (about US$923,000) through the Australian Research Council's Future Fellowship scheme to develop self-healing sodium-ion battery electrodes that combine specially engineered, defect-rich graphene with dynamic polymer networks to repair mechanical damage during operation.

Rechargeable batteries gradually lose performance through repeated charging and discharging, as the resulting mechanical stress causes microscopic cracks, loss of electrical contact, and electrode deterioration - a problem that becomes more pronounced as thicker electrodes are developed to increase energy storage. In the proposed design, the graphene provides highly conductive electron pathways while helping researchers engineer the interfaces within the electrode, while the dynamic polymer networks are designed to reconnect damaged regions as cracks and other defects develop during cycling.

NanoXplore has reported fiscal year 2026 results with total revenues of C$117.3 million (about US$84.3 million), down 9% from C$128.9 million (about US$92.6 million) the prior year, and a net loss of C$11.8 million (about US$8.5 million), compared to C$9.7 million (about US$6.9 million) in FY2025. Fourth-quarter revenue rose 7% year-over-year to C$33.9 million (about US$24.4 million), though adjusted EBITDA for the full year fell to C$1.9 million (about US$1.4 million) from C$6.1 million (about US$4.4 million), reflecting lower volumes and tooling revenues in the Advanced Materials, Plastics and Composite Products segment. The company guided to total revenues of C$130–140 million (about US$93.4–100.6 million) for fiscal 2027 and C$160–170 million (about US$115–122.2 million) for fiscal 2028.

The most significant strategic update came from VoltaXplore, NanoXplore's silicon-graphene-enhanced Li-ion battery subsidiary. Following a strategic review, the company has repositioned VoltaXplore away from its earlier focus on electric-vehicle applications and toward defense and dual-use platforms, including UAVs, UGVs, and portable electronics for Canadian and U.S. defense customers. NanoXplore cited growing demand for domestically produced battery cells driven by trade and geopolitical developments, along with procurement preferences for Canadian-manufactured products. VoltaXplore, which operates a 1 MWh cylindrical cell production facility in Montreal, has begun supplying cells to interested parties for testing and qualification, and continues to receive support from Natural Resources Canada's Energy Innovation Program and the National Research Council of Canada's IRAP program.

Graphene Manufacturing Group (GMG) has released new third-party cycling data on its fast-charging G®CELLS graphene battery technology, developed under GMG's Joint Development Agreement with mining giant Rio Tinto and with support from the Battery Innovation Center of Indiana (BIC) in the United States.

Testing conducted by BIC on 1 Ah G®CELLS - built by BIC using materials developed, manufactured, and supplied by GMG at its Brisbane Battery Development Centre - reportedly showed no measurable capacity fade after 489 charge-discharge cycles as of September 4, 2026, despite each full cycle (10C charge, 10C discharge) completing in just six minutes. By comparison, a benchmark lithium titanate oxide (LTO) cell, cycled under the same profile, degraded to 86% of its original capacity - near the industry-standard 80% end-of-life threshold - within just 64 cycles. That puts the G®CELLS' demonstrated cycle life at more than seven times that of the LTO benchmark.

Researchers at CICATA-Legaria, the National Laboratory for Energy Conversion and Storage at Mexico's Instituto Politécnico Nacional (IPN) in Mexico City, have developed a composite of pyridine-coordinated transition-metal nitroprussides and reduced graphene oxide (rGO) as a bifunctional pre-electrocatalyst for zinc-air batteries (ZABs). Testing cobalt, nickel, and copper versions of the material, the team found that each metal favors a different half of the battery's oxygen chemistry, with the cobalt variant striking the best overall balance.

Rechargeable zinc-air batteries are attractive for their high theoretical energy density, low cost, and inherent safety, but their air cathode has to drive both the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) during discharge and the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) during charging, reactions with sluggish kinetics that typically require different types of catalysts. The field's benchmark catalysts, platinum for ORR and iridium or ruthenium oxides for OER, are scarce and expensive, pushing research toward cheaper first-row transition metals such as cobalt, nickel, and copper. Nitroprussides, a family of cyanometallate coordination polymers with the general formula T[Fe(CN)₅NO], offered the team a synthetically simple, structurally tunable starting point for that search.

Solidion Technology (Nasdaq: STI), the advanced battery developer that emerged from the 2024 merger of Global Graphene Group's Honeycomb Battery Technology with Nubia Brand International, has reported its Q2 2026 results, showing a substantially rebuilt balance sheet and a second straight quarter of revenue.

The company closed the quarter with $27.7 million in cash and cash equivalents, against $0.2 million at the end of 2025. Following the completion of its $35 million private placement in June, Solidion said the substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern, previously disclosed, has been alleviated. The company also restructured its August 2024 equity financing, eliminating all Series C and D pre-funded warrants along with the associated derivative liability - a move it says reduces future dilution risk. Long-term investors Madison Bond LLC and Bayside Project LLC converted their entire warrant allocation into common stock and agreed to lock-up restrictions on those shares.

Volt Carbon Technologies and TensorOne have signed a memorandum of understanding to evaluate and develop advanced battery and carbon technologies for next-generation autonomous Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) and AI-enabled counter-UAS platforms. The MOU is a three-party agreement also naming Solid Ultrabattery Inc., Volt Carbon's wholly owned subsidiary.

Under the agreement, the parties intend to evaluate integrating Solid Ultrabattery's lithium metal battery technology with Volt Carbon's graphene and carbon materials on TensorOne's autonomous UAS platforms. The work is to include engineering validation, laboratory and flight testing, manufacturing evaluations, and the pursuit of future commercialization opportunities.

Reports suggest that NanoMalaysia (NMB), a company under the Malaysian Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MOSTI), will be starting small-scale production of a homegrown graphene-enhanced lithium-ion battery for use in electric vehicles (EVs).

Developed at a cost of around RM20 million (almost US$5 million), the battery will be produced at Gigafactory Malaysia, a wholly-owned subsidiary of NanoMalaysia. Incorporated in 2011.

Researchers from Lanzhou University, Tohoku University and SRM University have developed a molecularly engineered covalent organic framework (COF)-graphene interface that addresses two persistent challenges in lithium-sulfur (Li-S) batteries: polysulfide shuttling and sluggish conversion kinetics.

Li–S batteries are widely regarded as a next-generation energy storage technology due to sulfur’s high theoretical capacity and natural abundance. However, their practical deployment has been hindered by the dissolution and migration of intermediate lithium polysulfides (Li₂Sₙ), which leads to active material loss, parasitic reactions and rapid capacity decay over repeated cycles. To tackle this issue, the researchers designed a new COF, termed TUS-44, constructed via Schiff-base condensation between a tetrathiafulvalene (TTF)-based tetraaniline node and a benzocrown-6-derived tetrabenzaldehyde linker. The resulting material is an imine-linked, π-conjugated framework with a two-dimensional topology, uniform micropores of approximately 0.9 and 1.2 nm, and a BET surface area of about 516 m² g⁻¹.