Silicon eyed as way to boost electric car battery potential

Elcora Advanced Materials

15/11/2018 20:12

By Alan Charlish
    Nov 15 (Reuters) - The race to build a better electric car
battery is turning to silicon, with several companies working to
engineer types of the material that can boost driving range and
cut production costs.
    About 500,000 electric vehicles (EVs) were sold globally in
2016, a figure that is expected to jump sevenfold by 2022,
according to the U.S. Energy Information
Administration. urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nL1N1U21OA
    That increase is forecast to be helped by government
mandates to cut tailpipe emissions by banning gasoline and
diesel-powered cars. But many drivers have so far been put off
by the high cost of EVs and worries about driving range, which
so far is limited to a few hundred miles (kilometers) before
needing a charge.
    But silicon could, if adopted en masse for EV batteries,
help boost energy storage.
    One such company, California-based Sila Nanotechnologies,
aims to have its technology in over a million electric vehicle
(EVs) batteries by the middle of the next decade, Chief
Executive Gene Berdichevsky said in an interview.    
    Silicon has a higher energy density than the graphite
traditionally used as part of battery anodes. Batteries are
comprised of an anode and cathode, the negative and positive
parts, respectively, between which electrical current flows.
    Sila, which started at a laboratory at the Georgia Institute
of Technology, says it has developed technology that can replace
graphite entirely, helping to boost capacity and range. 
    Researchers at Vrije University in Brussels estimate that
using silicon can cut the cost per kilowatt hour of EVs by 30
percent. 
    Sila, which counts BMW AG  BMWG.DE  and Amperex Technology
Limited  300750.SZ  - the world's largest producer of batteries
for consumer goods - as key customers, aims to launch its
silicon products in consumer goods next year.
    "The year we have our eye on for being in the first vehicles
is 2023 so we'll need to get up to many gigawatt hours of
capacity to make a meaningful impact in the automotive space,"
said Berdichevsky, a former Tesla Inc  TSLA.O  engineer who
helped design the electric carmaker's Roadster model.
    While Sila's product replaces graphite entirely, Canadian
graphite material producer Elcora Advanced Materials Corp
 ERA.V  is one of a number of companies working on boosting the
capacity of graphite anode powders by adding silicon.
     "We've had a lot of discussions with lithium-ion battery
manufacturers and all of them are studying silicon sprinkled
into their graphite electrodes," said Shane Beattie, Elcora's
chief technology officer.
    Belgian materials technology and recycling group Umicore
 UMI.BR , a leading player in nickel manganese cobalt (NMC)
battery chemistries, has also started research into using more
silicon in batteries.
    "There is a lot of potential value for the battery industry
to be gained from these developments," said Marc Grynberg,
Umicore's chief executive. "That's why we want to be out there
in the market." 

 (Reporting by Alan Charlish in Gdynia
Editing by Ernest Scheyder and Tom Brown)
 ((alan.charlish@thomsonreuters.com; +48 58 772 1582;))