If you are an ODM, OEM, or value add Lithium-ion pack manufacturer in the consumer or industrial mobile electronics space and interested in early access to cell specifications and initial samples Conventional rechargeable Lithium-ion cells are hitting their limit
Conventional Lithium-ion and Lithium polymer cells suffer from severe limitations to improving energy density without introducing serious safety issues. The cells are typically constructed of rolled monolithic sheets of current collectors pasted with active materials and separator films. By their nature they have significant inactive materials that store no energy, yet are necessary "baggage" to make the battery function and be manufacturable. Typical industry tactics such as thinning the separator film in an attempt to improve energy density have resulted in serious safety issues as the architecture is prone to catastrophic thermal runaway throughout the entire cell once the separator fails. Safety issues will inevitably continue if not increase over time with industry efforts to improve energy density.
A wide range of modern materials do exist that could improve many battery performance metrics, including energy density, power performance, safety and cell manageability, however they are not feasible to integrate into the conventional "rolled sheet" architecture. The billions of $ in industry and government funded R&D on new materials has been handicapped by the constraint of having to integrate into an antiquated cell architecture.
ENOVIX 3D Wave Array™ Energy Storage Cell
More energy in a smaller, lighter, safer, and broadly superior rechargeable cell
ENOVIX has developed a cell that eliminates significant inactive materials, enables superior materials to become practical for cell integration, and enables cell components such as the Anode, Cathode, Separator and current collectors to be "designed" and processed optimally in a true 3 dimensional form, as opposed to the 2 dimensional stacked or rolled cell. This results in a disruptive and sustainable improvement to key metrics such as energy density, safety, power ability, charge time, cycle life, scalability, and manageability of the overall energy storage solution.
Pure Silicon Anodes made practical
Silicon has long held the promise as a superior anode to Carbon for Lithium ion and Lithium Polymer cells as it can store far more Lithium (the energy transport device that moves between the Anode and Cathode during Charge and Discharge) per gram or liter than carbon.
Integrating Silicon into conventional architectures has proved a daunting task as it has unique challenges during charge and discharge including expansion and a tendency to break apart over many cycles. A few conventional Li-ion manufacturers have recently announced plans for future batteries where they introduce and mix "portions" of Silicon with conventional legacy anode materials in order to get some of the intrinsic benefits of Silicon yet without adding so much silicon in that the conventional cell architecture breaks down.
One of the many advantages of the 3D Wave Array architecture is it enables Silicon to be processed and designed in a way where Pure Silicon anodes become fully practical with the full benefits to the cell realized and the challenges with the material uniquely solved.
In addition the pure Silicon Anode with ENOVIX proprietary processing is fundamentally safer than conventional Carbon anodes as it is much less prone to Lithium plating which can lead to catastrophic problems including thermal runaway and headline grabbing fires.
Highly Scalable in power, capacity, and in future roadmap
The 3D Wave Array architecture is fully capable of leveraging industry material improvements in ways not practical with the conventional 'low-tech' architecture. The first 3D Wave Array will be in Silicon Lithium-ion rechargeable cells enabling a dramatic improvement in energy density over conventional Lithium-ion and Lithium Polymer solutions with no hardware change to the host system required. Portable electronics systems of all types can realize increased operating times with reduced size and weight.
Ultimately, the 3D Wave Array cell is directly scalable into high power transportation, solar, and grid storage solutions where the lower cost of materials per kwh, reduced size and weight, and increased safety and manageability of the energy storage will allow "clean-tech" ecosystems to close critical gaps in competitiveness with their fossil fuel oriented counterparts.