Constantin Ionel Stefan

Safe Fast Charging of EV batteries is an important and complex topic. Here is a recently (May 2024) published review of the role of the Solid Electrolyte Interface (SEI) which is formed on the active materials during the cell formation process in the EV cell factory. The full article can be downloaded for free at: https://lnkd.in/gp6pASMP Recently, OneD Battery Sciences' CTO Yimin Zhu and Senior Scientist Chunsheng Du (who have worked together for more than a decade on the SINANODE technologies), invented a novel inexpensive surface coating never used before by anyone in the battery industry (based on extensive searches of scientific articles and patent filings around the world). The SINANODE materials are based on silicon nanowires grown inside the pores of natural or synthetic graphite particles from Anode Active Materials from several EV-qualified suppliers. The OneD novel invention provides a thin layer that allows for a more uniform and more stable SEI. Testing on EV cells prototypes (format 46XX) have shown that it is possible to achieve 4C charging between 20% and 80% of SOC, without degradation of the capacity retention over the cycle life. Of course, OneD is not an EV cell maker and OneD collacborates with multiple partners to optimize the anode active materials, the electrode coating, the cell designs and other aspects, in a step-by-step approach. #evbatteries #fastcharging

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The EV cell cylindrical cell format 4680, with "tabless" design is relatively new and this just published article does a great job at analyzing the costs from a manufacturing process perspective. Affordable EVs depend on lower cost & higher performance batteries, and this is highly relevant information. At OneD Battery Sciences, we have been prototyping and testing many 46XX cells for our customers, with both NMCA and NCA cathodes and with SINANODE anodes made using SINANODE-processing of uncoated natural graphites from EV-qualified suppliers. By combining a very inexpensive carbon substrate (uncoated EV-grade graphite already produced at large-scale) and adding silicon inside the pores (with our novel surface treatment), we can demonstrate both the decrease in costs, the increase in cell capacity, as well as the cycling and charging performance and lower carbon footprint. This article is published here: Pegel, Hendrik and Grimm, Adrian and Frey, Christian and Seefeldt, Volker and Baazouzi, Sabri and Sauer, Dirk Uwe, Manufacturing of Tabless Cylindrical Lithium-Ion Cells: Quantifying the Influence of Cell Dimensions and Housing Material Via Process-Based Cost Modeling. Available at SSRN: https://lnkd.in/gW8Z5ia5 or https://lnkd.in/gR4VKDS7 #evbattery

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Cell Benchmarking: https://lnkd.in/emw2EKiS Specifications for cells are getting more difficult to locate and are containing less data, therefore, I thought it might be good to do some informal google search based cell benchmarking. If we pick off some of the most important cells and list the high level specifications and link to other pages, papers and references where they have been tested we could piece together a better picture. Also, I think we can link to the application benchmarks and use that data as a reference as to what the cell is actually capable of. Of course, their are some great cell specification sheets and we will link to them as well. #batteries #batterycells #benchmark

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The PRICE of EVs and the manufacturing COST of EV batteries are the two most important factors to the GROWTH of EV sales and the PROFITABILITY of EV OEMs. In the competitive race to meet consumer demand for more affordable EVs with better range and faster charging, the EV OEMs must evaluate and compare several EV cell chemistries and set out their road map and their supply chains for the rest of the decade. In that context, the technical and economic differences between EV cells with LFP cathodes and with NMC cathodes are very important. This recent paper reviews these factors and computes some sensitivity analyses. OneD Battery Sciences SINANODE manufacturing process can help narrow the cost gap between battery packs using NMC-based EV cells and LFP-based EV cells. This is because SINANODE can reduce the cost gap and increase the performance gap. Not only NMC cells using SINANODE anodes (i.e. silicon inside the pores of EV graphite) have a higher energy density and faster charging than NMC cells using pure graphite anodes, but SINANODE reduces the cost gap and can scale-up to large quantities faster than other silicon technologies. #evbatteries #silicon #LFP #NMC #manufacturingcost

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The forecasting of EV battery costs is a difficult topic, which must include trends in supply/demand for key materials and processes, but also the choice of chemistries and technologies used in the EV battery stack. This excellent paper published at the end of 2023 does a good job of covering many topics. Yet, some of the data and assumptions are already outdated... Feel free to comment! #evbatteries

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More delays in planned EV cell factories in Europe. The economics of EV cell factories depend on several factors: > Chemistries Selected > Cost of Energy > Yields Acheived > EV Demand for planned EVs

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🔋 Electronic Design Considerations for Battery Integration 🔋 When designing electronic systems that incorporate batteries, several critical factors must be considered to ensure optimal performance and safety. Here are some key considerations: 🔸 Type of Battery: Choosing the right battery chemistry (Li-ion, NiMH, NiCd, etc.) is crucial. Each type has its own advantages in terms of energy density, cycle life, and safety. 🔹 Charging Circuit Needs: The charging circuit must be designed to match the battery type. This includes selecting appropriate charging algorithms and ensuring the circuit can handle the required charging current and voltage. 🔸 Maximum Current Drawn: Understanding the peak and average current requirements of your device is essential. This helps in selecting a battery that can deliver the necessary current without degrading performance or lifespan. 🔹 Size of the Battery: The physical size of the battery must fit within the design constraints of the device. This often involves a trade-off between battery capacity and the available space. 🔸 Power Management: Efficient power management is key to extending battery life. This includes implementing low-power modes, optimizing power consumption, and using power management ICs to regulate voltage and current. 🔹 Effects of Radio Frequency (RF): RF emissions can interfere with battery performance and vice versa. Proper shielding and layout techniques are necessary to minimize these effects and ensure reliable operation. 🔸 Temperature of the Battery: Batteries are sensitive to temperature variations. High temperatures can accelerate degradation, while low temperatures can reduce performance. Thermal management solutions are essential to maintain optimal battery temperature. 🔹 Operation Time: The expected operation time between charges is a critical factor. This depends on the battery capacity and the power consumption of the device. Accurate estimation of operation time helps in selecting the right battery and designing efficient power management systems. By carefully considering these factors, you can design robust and efficient battery-powered electronic systems that meet the demands of modern applications. #BatteryDesign #Electronics #PowerManagement #RFDesign #Engineering

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The fast charging of EV battery packs is a complex topic. Even when electrodes’ internal resistance is very low, higher currents generate much higher amount of heat (proportional to R * I^2, but other factors must be taken into account). Managing safety and protecting cells from damages, require modeling the heat transfers inside the cells, between the cells and at the pack level, and optimizing the software of the BMS (Battery Management System). Here is an interesting modeling work: https://lnkd.in/gRbUc-6e Interestingly, the EV cell format 46XX may offer unique advantages. This becomes even more important when considering high energy density cells with silicon-graphite anodes. For example, the diffusion time constant for lithium ions into silicon nanowires in the SINANODE anode materials is about 4 time faster than the time constant for intercallation of lithium ions in the graphite anode material. Over a significant range of electrode potentials (20% to 80% SOC), it is possible to fast charge the silicon nanowires without lithium plating. However, the proper “system design” must be carefully evaluated. #evbatteries #fastcharging

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As indicated in my prior posts, the strategic importance of IP in the EV battery supply chain is increasing. Large companies headquartered in Japan, Korean and China are setting up large factories in Europe and North America, closer to the OEM customers in these key markets. Competing with one another, their respective innovations and IP freedom to operate becomes a critical point in protecting their investments and offering to their customers the required "IP freedom to operate". Financial indemnification is not sufficient. A new technology needs to have sufficient granted patents with broad valid claims secured in multiple countries, early priority filings, and no overlap with direct competitors claiming similar materials or processes. Most likely, this requires a significant number of priority applications filed more than a decade ago and diligently prosecuted in all key markets (US, EU, KR, JP, CN). A good understanding of a portfolio can only start when multiple patent offices have reviewed the patent applications and the claims compared to any published prior art and granted the claims in these countries. For example, the silicon anode publications (both scientific publications and published patent applications) span many thousands of publications over 20 years in many languages. #evbatteries #intellectualproperty #freedomtooperate

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This paper was just published two days ago. It present an excellent overview of the key parameters driving EV battery quality at large production scale. Whether the cost of quality is measured by manufacturing yield losses or by safety issues or other metrics, it is clear that a statistical understanding of end-to-end impact of design & process choices is required to link performance degradation, functional failures and safety events, as explained here.

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LG Energy Solutions and Panasonic Energy have had long running R&D programs in the fields related to EV batteries. This is an example of strategic licensing combination. Companies that have incomplete IP portfolio (for many possible reasons: due to recent priority dates or incomplete geographical coverage or weak granted claims or oppositions in various patent offices or IP disputes with owners of overlapping IP), will face difficulties in getting their innovation adopted at large scale. Most OEMs have very talented IP team and a rigorous process to evaluate and understand the IP risks of incorporating new technologies into their EVs.

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Next generation EV batteries will comprise anodes that include materials combining nano-silicon and a carbon substrate. The key is to do produce such materials very efficiently to reduce manufacturing costs and make batteries for affordable EVs and to do it at EV-scale for millions of battery packs per year. Here is one of the many OneD patents, which describes a key element of the SINANODE technologies: the use of a nano-catalyst to decompose silane gas into nano-silicon fused to the carbon substrate. Nano-catalyst particles are synthesized using inexpensive and non-toxic ingredients (which are readily available from the food industry) and deposited inside the pores of EV-grade natural graphite particles from powders already produced by suppliers qualified by EV cell factories. With the SINANODE process, the silane gas very quickly reacts with the nano-catalysts and grow silicon nanowires fused to the graphite. The SINANODE-enhanced graphite anode materials can store three times more energy, reducing the amount of graphite needed for a 70 kWh battery pack from 60 kg (130 pounds) by two-thirds. This is much more efficient and less expensive than the thermal decomposition of silane inside the nano-scale pores of hard carbon manufactured from burning phenolic resins. #evbatteries #silicon #catalyst

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ALAMEDA, Calif., September 19, 2024--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Sila Nanotechnologies, Inc. ("Sila"), a next-generation battery materials company, today announced a multi-year supply agreement with a wholly owned subsidiary of REC Silicon ASA ("REC"), a leading innovator in solar-grade silicon and silicon materials. The first commercial deal for REC’s silane in the EV battery market and ensures US-supply of silane for production of Sila’s Titan Silicon™ anode material. "Our agreement with REC Silicon is a critical step in securing the raw materials needed to deliver Titan Silicon to our auto customers for the long-haul," said Gene Berdichevsky, Co-founder and CEO at Sila. "It also marks the importance of ensuring domestic production and supply of a critical next-generation material to support US manufacturing leadership in clean energy." Read full article: https://lnkd.in/esUktZVd 👉Follow Battery Market News for the latest happenings in the battery industry and more! #Sila #SilaNano #RECsilicon #SilaNanoTechnologies #Advancedtechnology #Battery #BatteryProduction #BatteryMarket #BatteryMarketNews #BatteryNews #BatteryMarketTrends #BatteryNewsUpdates #BatteryNews2024 #eMobility #Battery #BatteryProduction #BatteryNewsPage #BatteryResearch #Batteries #CleanEnergy #BatteryIndustryNews

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This LG announcement should make clear the strategic importance of patents in the EV battery supply chain, and the need to ensure freedom to operate when investing in and adopting new battery technologies. https://lnkd.in/gM2j5VCE OneD Battery Sciences spent more than a decade investing in the processes required to scale its SINANODE inventions to EV-scale quantities and meet the cost targets for batteries for affordable EVs. At the same time, OneD invested in its patent portfolio, securing more than 200 granted patents in Europe, USA, Korea, Japan, China, etc. Thanks to early priority filing dates and IP covering materials, processes and equipment, SINANODE offers silicon anode technologies with a freedom to operate that is not achieved by other silicon anode technologies (based on extensive analyses of thousands of patent publications during the last two decades). #evbatteries #intellectualproperty #freedomtooperate

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This article summarizes very well the economic and technical drivers of the OEMs' EV battery road maps. The basic facts are simple: EV demand requires less expensive EVs with more range and charging faster, but today's EV battery costs are too high. Hence, China's LFP batteries, which are less expensive but have lower energy density than NMC batteries, have gained market share. OneD is in a very unique position because it is the only silicon anode technology for EV anodes that can decrease the cost gap between LFP and NMC batteries and increase the performance advantage of NMC batteries. #evbatteries

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While it is well recognized that next generation silicon anodes are essential to EV batteries, there is still a lot of mis-understanding and confusion. This review article does a good job of explaining the critical aspects and the need to marry silicon and graphite in the anodes. Recommended: look carefully at Figure 2, Table 1, Figure 4, and Figure 23. Only showing here some selected pages. The full article can be purchased at: https://lnkd.in/gmB2zU5M At OneD Battery Sciences, we have scaled-up the SINANODE process to marry nano-silicon and EV-grade graphite in a very unique way, to address many of the critical issues raised in this Review Article. First, it is the ONLY patented process that fuses nano-silicon directly inside the pores of EV-grade graphite particles from several EV-qualified suppliers. This avoids electrode non-uniformities resulting from mixing two powders, silicon additives with graphite, when preparing and coating the slurry on high-speed electrode coating machines. Second, it is the ONLY patented process to use nano-catalyst particles to control the size of the nano-silicon without having to control the size of the pores in the carbon substrate, and to fully decompose the silane gas quickly and with less energy and waste. Third, it is the ONLY patented process to offer a very thin unique coating (a few nanometers) onto the surfaces of the nano-silicon and the graphite, to extend the capacity retention and cycle life without using pitch coating. Finally, the EV-scale production of SINANODE anode materials is not dependent on expensive precursors. The OneD & Koch Modular exclusive partnership enables the production of thousands of tons per year of SiH4 (silane gas) at low cost and the delivery by pipeline to the SINANODE factory, where the graphite from two EV-qualified suppliers can be processed with their own unique specifications. The OneD Licensing Business Model means that EV OEMs can rely on large industrial partners for mass production, rather than on unproven equipment from start-ups that have yet to produce even one thousand ton of carbon substrate... The OneD IP portfolio offers unmatched the IP Freedom to Operate that is necessary to protect the large-scale investments. Simply: faster, better, cheaper, and lower risks. PS: for mass-produced EV batteries, there no valid technical or economical justification for getting rid of EV-grade graphite and replacing the anode active material entirely with pure silicon or pure silicon-hard carbon. Next time someone tries to convince you otherwise, asks three simple questions: (a) How will you produce hundred thousand tons at the required quality and cost to displace entirely EV-grade graphite in the anodes? (b) At what unit cost (variable opex cost + capex depreciation costs) ? (c) Which EV OEMs and EV Cell Factory has built several thousand EV battery packs with your pure (unblended) anode material and are fully qualified for commercial production ?

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#Batteries come in two main types: primary and secondary. Primary batteries are non-rechargeable and meant for single-use applications, while secondary batteries, or rechargeable batteries, can be used multiple times through recharging. #BatteryTechnology #Sustainability #PhiladelphiaScientific

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