Enevate silicon anode batteries will bring ultrafast and safe charging to EVs

2024-01-08

According to foreign media reports, as large-scale investments in the battery industry begin to bear fruit, the progress of battery technology is beginning to become thinner and charge faster. Enegate from California, USA has been developing silicon anode technology since 2005, and now the company claims that they have not only successfully implemented a fast charging solution for lithium-ion electric vehicle batteries, but also easily increased energy density.

The anode of a typical current type lithium battery is made of graphite. However, Benjamin Park, the founder and CEO of Enevate, stated that replacing it with silicon material would not only instantly increase the energy density of the battery by 25%, but also achieve ultra fast charging - but people would have to accept the fact that the battery would expand by 400% during charging, ultimately leading to surface cracking and degradation. This type of charging will result in the battery being scrapped after completing hundreds of cycles.

Enevate proposed a solution for this, which is to use a hard, porous, and conductive thin film, with each pore having its own small silicon "balloon" inside. This means that silicon can expand and contract freely without causing any cracking, without causing any cracking problems.

These features can increase energy density by about 30% on the basis of current type technology, with the ability to charge up to 350 Wh/kg and extremely fast - effectively charging the energy required for a range of 400 kilometers into the battery within 5 minutes. Thisnot far from the speed of filling the fuel tank with gasoline. If the infrastructure can be improved, it will become a game changer.

In addition, this type of battery can charge well at temperatures far below freezing point, which is difficult for other lithium batteries to achieve. Enevate stated that its electrodes are not affected by lithium deposition, and we know that lithium deposition can cause dangerous dendritic formation, leading to battery short circuits and ignition. Therefore, they also seem to be safer than the batteries people currently use.

Several large companies, including LG, Samsung, Mitsubishi, Renault, and Nissan, have invested $111 million in this technology, and Enegate says their batteries are now ready to embrace the arrival of the big era. Park revealed in an interview that Enegate is designing battery packs for the 2024 and 2025 models to bring its batteries into the consumer products of major manufacturers. It is currently unclear for whom or for what purpose they will produce these battery packs, but it is believed that the investors mentioned above may be one of them.

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