San Jose's Sakuu is printing a key battery component without harmful chemicals.
It's part of an improved process that could change supply chain dynamics in the crucial industry, the company said in a press release.
What's more, the West Coast outfit intends to make longer-lasting batteries for electric vehicles, large-scale storage, and other devices.
It all starts with a special dry-printing method to manufacture cathodes, one of the two electrodes necessary for battery function. They are often made with an expensive, complicated, and solvent-laden process, the company detailed.
Sakuu's innovative process is called the Kavian Manufacturing Platform. A nickel-cobalt-manganese, or NCM, cell created with it has maintained an impressive 83% of its charge after 4,000 test cycles, besting the rate from a typical battery that operates for half the time.
"This myth-busting achievement is a testament to our materials engineering expertise, as customers tell us other additive manufacturers experimenting with dry processes struggle to achieve satisfactory results across the entire printed electrode — particularly the cathode," Sakuu CEO Robert Bagheri said in the release.
NCM is one of numerous emerging battery technologies being developed worldwide to lower costs and improve performance.
The chemistry type is being studied in Russia because of its performance potential. Cathode improvements are in the works from Toyota and other companies as well.
For its part, Sakuu's Kavian platform can dry print cathodes and anodes for a variety of battery chemistry types.
Dry printing is touted by experts at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory as a production-compatible, cleaner, and cost-saving process that can reduce dependence on Chinese-made parts.
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For sure 💯 "If you can use a dry process instead, you can reduce your footprint by up to 40% or 50%, saving hundreds of millions of dollars and starting to enable the creation of an infrastructure to replace one that is largely dependent on Asia," researcher Bryan Steinhoff said in an ORNL release.
More sustainable pack production can help to limit the mining and processing needed for batteries. Sustainability by Numbers estimated that tens of millions of tons of deposits will be needed to supply the clean-energy shift. But that is far short of the 16.5 billion tons of dirty fuels mined from Earth each year.
The planet-warming fumes released when those fossil resources are burned are linked by NASA to greater risks for severe storms that are impacting crop production in the United States and elsewhere.
EVs directly benefit from better batteries, and superb packs are already powering rides that can travel hundreds of miles on a single charge.
It's a great time to make the switch away from a gas-guzzling machine, as EV owners typically save about $1,500 a year in fuel and maintenance costs.
Certain states offer perks for buying and charging EVs, and each one that replaces a gas car prevents thousands of pounds of heat-trapping tailpipe exhaust annually, according to government data.
At Sakuu, improvements from its printing method include a 60% smaller manufacturing space, a 30% savings in utility operating costs, and a 55% reduction in planet-warming fumes during manufacturing.
The company is taking orders, and it has already delivered hundreds of meters of the material to customers.
Sakuu is also making supercapacitor electrodes for units that can power data centers with surging electricity demand.
"Our extensive testing confirms that Kavian's dry manufacturing process can be reliably trusted to deliver a product that will meet or exceed the capabilities of current wet processes," Bagheri said.
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