Date: 9/18/2020
Author: Kent Moors, Ph.D.
When I was young, I would poke around laboratories to see what was up. I didn’t have much of a social life in those days. It led to my first academic fascination (theoretical physics) and my first degree (at age 16). It also started a lifelong process of watching smart folks push the envelope…and catching on to new developments a bit before others could.
You see, I won my first science fair at age 12 by making a “perpetual motion” machine. It really didn’t do very much but was kind of cool. It used ions in a closed container, running them through a charged screen between magnets. Since the charge was constantly changing, the ions repeatedly moved between the magnets.
By putting a simple drive shaft mechanism through the center, I could light a (very) low-wattage bulb… or at least make it flicker. I called it a “flicker tickler.”
OK, cut me some slack; I was only 12.
I am recalling all this because of what may happen in a few days. Tesla’s “Battery Day” is scheduled for Tuesday, September 22. There are several rumors floating around about what Mr. Musk will unveil, but I have not been able to nail anything down.
However, if it’s what I’m hoping it is, it could prove a very big deal.
There’s a major obstacle preventing a shift to a more electrified energy system and the widespread use of wind and solar power. That’s the need to utilize power almost as soon as it is produced. Despite some advances in power storage, we can’t retain most of what’s generated.
For years, I’ve said a breakthrough in batteries that would increase power storage would be the energy sector’s “Holy Grail.” The ability to store and retrieve electricity over longer periods of time would transform the market.
Absent a leak from the Tesla “powers that be,” we have to just await next Tuesday. However, my network isn’t idle. Any advance in battery technology will create new profit plays for investors.
And one of those in my network has been heavily involved with Tesla. More on that in just a moment.
There is little doubt that we are advancing towards a battery breakthrough. It won’t be some singular history-altering achievement, but a series of incremental improvements. As I have noted before in Classified Intelligence Brief, this is innovation (using things that already exist in a new way) rather than invention (coming up with something entirely new).
Most advances have been innovative rather than inventive. But it’s a mistake to think that gradual advances are less important. We may be very close to the innovation that could be the energy sector’s “Holy Grail” and the key to the next generation of batteries. It combines work being undertaken at several locations. I have visited several of them to see firsthand what these folks are up to.
Daniel Oberhaus recently summarized in WIRED what we’ve been following. His article came after a conference call I had with several of the main researchers. They’re pursuing an approach I’ve been tracking for almost five years.
Here’s where our Tesla connection surfaces. Gene Berdichevsky led the team that designed Tesla’s first family of lithium-ion batteries. He was Elon Musk’s go-to battery man. These days he heads up a private company, Sila Nanotechnologies.
He and a few others realized that a different approach was necessary to create a more efficient battery. Sila’s approach is to introduce nanoengineered particles of silicon to supercharge lithium-ion cells when used as the battery’s negative electrode, or anode. Today, Sila is one of a handful of companies racing to bring lithium-silicon batteries out of the lab and into the real world. The potential applications are countless.
As Daniel puts it, the long-term goal is high-energy electric vehicles (EVs) to transform transportation. However, the first stop will be small devices. As early as the first quarter of 2021, Gene says he plans to have the first lithium-silicon batteries in consumer electronics. He claims these batteries will last 20 percent longer per charge.
Here is the intriguing part. Both silicon and lithium are already there in portable consumer electronics. Any cell phone, laptop, or other device will have a lithium-ion battery providing power and a silicon-based circuit board routing them to applications.
However, combining the two in a battery has traditionally been a major problem. Charging lithium-ion battery has the ions flowing to an anode usually made of a carbon-based substance called graphite. If you swap silicon for the graphite, far more lithium ions can be stored in the anode, which increases the energy capacity of the battery. But packing all these lithium ions into the electrode causes it to expand, often by a factor of four.
The swollen anode can pulverize the nanoengineered silicon particles and rupture the protective barrier between the anode and the battery’s electrolyte, which transports the lithium ions between the electrodes. Over time, “crud” builds up at the boundary between the anode and electrolyte. This blocks the efficient transfer of lithium ions and takes many of the ions out of service. It destroys any performance improvements the silicon anode initially provided.
One way out of this problem is to sprinkle small amounts of silicon oxide—better known as sand—throughout a graphite anode. This is what Tesla currently does with its batteries. Silicon oxide comes “pre-puffed” (an actual technical term) so it reduces the stress on the anode from swelling during charging. Unfortunately, this also limits the amount of lithium that can be stored in the anode. Juicing a battery this way isn’t enough to produce double-digit performance gains, but it’s better than nothing.
The key is getting the best of silicon and graphite without the loss of energy capacity. At NanoGraf, another small startup pioneering in the field, energy is being boosted in carbon-silicon batteries by embedding silicon particles in graphene.
I am still a strong believer in graphene being one of the most significant discoveries of the past two decades. It will occupy a central role in the radical transformation of energy use. But that is a conversation for another time.
NanoGraf’s contribution to battery transformation is applying a graphene matrix to give silicon room to swell and to protect the anode from damaging reactions with the electrolyte. Company designs point to a graphene-silicon anode increasing the amount of energy in a lithium-ion battery by up to 30 percent.
Yet to push that number to higher levels, graphite needs to be replaced. Researchers have been able to make silicon anodes for years, but they have struggled to scale the advanced nanoengineering processes involved in manufacturing them.
Sila has successfully figured out how to mass-manufacture silicon nanoparticles. Their solution involves packing silicon nanoparticles into a rigid shell, which protects them from damaging interactions with the battery’s electrolyte. The inside of the shell is basically a silicon sponge, and its porosity means it can accommodate swelling when the battery is charging.
At this point, Daniel’s research provides some interesting connections. The advances at Sila parallel a process used by New Orleans-based Advano, where they are producing silicon nanoparticles in very large amounts. To lower costs, Advano uses as raw material silicon wafer scrap from companies that make solar panels and other electronics. The chemical process employed grinds the wafers down into highly engineered nanoparticles that can be used for battery anodes.
Once again, innovation at work.
As Advano head Alexander Girau put it in a conversation last month, the real problem is not ending up with a more powerful battery. Rather, the real issue is coming up with a battery cheap enough to allow trillions of them to be produced. With his scrap-to-anode approach, Alexander believes he has a solution.
So far, none of these companies has seen their anode material used in a consumer product, but each is in talks with battery manufacturers to make it happen. Sila expects its anodes to be in unnamed wireless earbuds and smartwatches early next year. Advano, which counts an iPod cocreator among its investors, is also in talks to have its anodes placed in consumer electronics soon.
It is still a reach to EVs, but proving the tech works in gadgets is a major step in that direction. Companies are just pursuing the more achievable introductions of silicon-lithium batteries in small consumer electronics first.
The pace of battery development is frustratingly slow compared to advances in computers. This is because of a complicated web of problems that arise when you attempt to replace graphite with silicon in the anodes. You must increase energy density while avoiding a reduction in the battery’s charge rate, life span, or thermal stability (keeping it from getting too hot).
As an aside, this heat concern is similar to the problem I was having in the design of a supercomputer used to crunch numbers for my Sigma Surges trading algorithms. However, that too is the subject of a conversation for another time.
The battery improvements being applied this year in small consumer products would add 100-150 miles per charge to an EV. That provides the driving range necessary for widespread expansion of electric vehicles.
However, the jump from small handheld devices to EVs is a huge one. Small commercial batteries need last only a few years. EVs require batteries that last more than a decade, can handle daily recharging, a wide range of temperatures, and meet other unique stress elements. Building a lithium-silicon battery that retains its high energy over longer time spans is a much greater challenge.
Nonetheless, what is underway in silicon-lithium battery applications is flat out inspiring.
And with Tesla sources teasing an approaching time when a million-mile EV battery is possible, something big seems to be on the horizon. It will also allow us at CIB to explain the other fascinating innovations we are tracking and the ways Main Street investors can tap into these next generation energy advances.
Now, if only I had patented my little “flicker tickler.”
Dr. Kent Moors
This is an installment of Classified Intelligence Brief, your guide to what’s really happening behind the headlines… and how to profit from it.
Dr. Kent Moors served the United States for 30 years as one of the most highly decorated intelligence operatives alive today (including THREE Presidential commendations). After moving through the inner circles of royalty, oligarchs, billionaires, and the uber-rich, he discovered some of the most important secrets regarding finance, geo-politics, and business. As a result, he built one of the most impressive rolodexes in the world. His insights and network of contacts took him from a Vietnam veteran to becoming one of the globe’s most sought after consultants, with clients including six of the largest energy companies and the United States government.
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