Ionic Materials Inc. has developed a solid polymer electrolyte that works at room temperature and that could replace flammable liquid electrolytes in traditional batteries. The company says its technology could yield a batteries that are safer than liquid-electrolyte batteries, have greater energy density per weight and volume than traditional batteries, and would be cost-effective through the use of high-volume, low-cost polymer processing techniques.
The company adds that solid ceramic electrolytes face challenges relating to manufacturability, brittleness, stability, and cost, while other solid polymers have functioned only at high temperatures (the French electric carmaker Bolloré, for example, employs a lithium polymer battery that requires preheating).
Writing in The New York Times, John Markoff notes that Mike Zimmerman, in pursuit of “the holy grail of solid batteries,” likes to drive nails through solid polymer lithium metal batteries to shock visitors but more importantly to show that nothing happens. Zimmerman is CEO and founder of the company.
Writes Markoff, “Ionic Materials is one of a new wave of academic and commercial research efforts in the United States, Europe, and Asia to find safer battery technologies as consumers demand more performance from phones and cars.” He adds that U.S. rivals Seeo and Sakti have recently been bought by the German industrial firm Bosch and the British vacuum-cleaner maker Dyson, respectively.
In addition, he writes, Ionic Materials in September won a $3 million contract from the U.S. Department of Energy’s agency supporting research in next-generation energy technologies—one of 16 awards from the agency.
Zimmerman has a background in semiconductor packaging. Markoff quotes CMU physicist Jay Whitacre as saying, “What’s so intriguing about Mike and his folks is they are using known production techniques borrowed from the semiconductor packaging industry.” Whitacre was previously involved with Ionic Materials and is now chief scientist at Aquion Energy.
Zimmerman hopes to begin manufacturing within the next two years, notes Markoff.
He concludes by quoting Paul Albertus, a program manager at the DoE’s Advanced Research Project Agency-Energy, as saying, “We are in a golden age of new chemistry development which probably hasn’t been seen in 30 or 40 years, since the last energy crisis. It’s a pretty exciting time to be developing energy-storage technology.”
