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NREL Effort Leads to New Solid-State Lithium Battery Company

From the 2007 Research Review.

It can take decades to move from research and development to a commercial enterprise. But in one case, NREL's research has rather quickly led to a new start-up company that is developing solid-state batteries for use in sensors, medical devices, and other products that require safe power sources with high capacities and long lifetimes.

It all began when NREL researchers Ed Tracy, Se-Hee Lee, and Ping Liu decided to take their thin-film expertise from window technology research and apply it to a solid-state, thin-film lithium battery.

"Thin-film batteries have a problem with respect to being degraded very fast," says Tracy. "That's because the lithium metal anode is always on top, and if there were a way to get it on the bottom, it would be a much more durable device.

"We had a concept to construct this device by electrochemically plating the lithium anode on a lower layer of the battery, forming a 'buried' anode."

Although the team made progress, their work accelerated when Battelle Ventures visited NREL looking for new technologies. Battelle Ventures is a $220 million independent venture fund that aims to leverage the technologies and expertise of the national laboratories managed or co-managed by Battelle.

Coincidentally, the Battelle Ventures team had earlier visited DOE's Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), which was trying to commercialize a thin-film lithium battery. The Battelle Ventures team recognized the synergies between the two laboratories' work and provided funding for NREL to demonstrate working prototypes.

With Roland Pitts leading the task, the team found that their battery technology was very durable and had a high charge capacity, suggesting that it was commercially viable. Meanwhile, Battelle Ventures and entrepreneur Scott Faris jointly founded a company called Planar Energy Devices, Inc., which licensed both the NREL and the ORNL technology. Since then, Roland Pitts has taken sabbatical leave to work at Planar and oversee the transfer of the technology from the labs to Planar.

"We are currently in the stage of acquiring equipment and building out our prototype laboratory, and we're just starting to try to make some prototype batteries," says Pitts. "We recently acquired the facilities and equipment of another ORNL battery licensee, which will allow us to get to market much sooner than we had originally planned."

Planar's batteries will be highly compact and last virtually forever, changing the way electronic devices are used and designed. And because the solid-state lithium batteries are made from inorganic materials, they don't suffer from potential thermal runaway and fires, as do lithium-ion batteries. The NREL technology allows for a breakthrough in manufacturing as well.

"With the NREL technology, we can deposit all of the thin films at ambient temperatures, enabling the use of polymers and flexible substrates, as well as new types of high-capacity cathode materials," says Pitts. "Now we can make high-capacity, solid-state batteries on a true roll-to-roll manufacturing line, making it a very low cost approach."

The technology certainly has Battelle Ventures convinced. In June 2007, the fund committed $4 million in venture financing for the new start-up, providing the critically needed capital to keep the company going as it develops its promising technology.