Both has Arnold and cathode. How can solid-state addresser
maybe what can it not address? In the past, in 50 years, and
there are lots of improvements. One of the most important issues
scientific challenges of the solid-state battery.
What will be the price point of that?
How competitive for the batteries?
Performance with performance. What's happening in this space
right now? Before we get started with
today's episode of this Battery Insiders podcast, I want to let
you know that we have another Battery MBA cohort starting in
January. You can still apply for till the
18th of December, hopefully. See many of you there.
Welcome, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us
for the Battery Insiders podcast here live from the Future
Battery Forum in Berlin. And yeah, I'm very excited
today. Have a discussion about
solid-state batteries and have with me today Doctor Chi Do, who
is the Co founder and CEO of HITA and very excited to have
you here. And we want to talk about the
latest state-of-the-art in solid-state and get a bit of an
overview also kind of what's happening in this space right
now. So maybe to start to kind of go
right to it kind of if you could start by giving us a bit of an
overview of the current landscape of solid-state
batteries and how this industry is evolving.
Thank you, Simon and thank you for the Battery Associates to
having me to here to join this podcast.
And for the solid-state battery, basically this is not something
new since the 1970s and there is already polymer based
solid-state battery reported from scientific journals.
And in the past, you know, 50 years and there are lots of
improvements. And regarding this inorganic
solid-state battery technology route, basically it also started
more than 30 years ago and they started from Toyota.
And then in the late 90s, they started the research in the
field of oxide and sulfide electrolyte until today,
especially in the past couple of years and given the energy
transition mega trend and the people are looking for more and
more different energy storage solutions and the solid-state
battery because it has its advantage in the energy density
as well as the safety profile and they attract lots of
attention. And for example, in US and in
Europe, there are lots of startups from the spin off of
the research institution and from let's say in China.
And there are lots of player, big players in the recent years
and started to make it a semi solid-state batteries.
Great. And maybe we could share a bit
more about now, what's the difference, right, Because if
you have liquid based lithium ion batteries and then
solid-state batteries. So if you maybe can walk us a
little through like what's the difference and maybe some of the
similarities as well for these kind of different technologies
from the structure, functionality, mechanisms,
etcetera? Thank you.
Basically, it's a function of the solid-state battery and the
liquid lithium ion battery is the same and both has Arnold and
the cathode and the electrolyte basically functionalize the
carrier of the lithium ions to realize the charging,
discharging. Yeah.
The main distinction between these two is that for the
solid-state battery, because it's material innovation, it
could achieve potentially very high energy density because you
can design molecular structures and also make it to withstand
much broad electrochemical windows and so that you can have
more active electrodes. And also from the say safety
perspective and because you are using the non proton
electrolyte, it could for animate the root cause of the
the the fair hazards of the liquid electrolytes.
Yeah, basically they see the main difference.
Therefore, people regard solid-state battery as next
generation of tech battery technology because it can
achieve much higher energy density and plus more as a safe.
Yeah. And also kind of to distinguish,
right, because I think you mentioned semi solid-state
before as well. So there's some hybrids because
often people only talk about liquid, right, and then they
talk about solid, but there's actually also things in between.
If you could share a bit more about this like.
Well, basically this comes to let's say the scientific
challenges of the solid-state battery.
As I mentioned previously from let's say early, early 70s and
the people has already started to work on solid-state battery.
But why until today and there is only, not too many, I would say
only one based on the polyester, polyester oxide material which
realized commercialized application.
Yeah. And the the challenge is that in
the solid-state battery, the lithium ions transports through
the three solid phase, it's cathode, anode and the
electrolyte especially there are another additional 2 solid,
solid interface. So in the solid interface and
there are lots of problems, yeah, because there are mainly
there's a four type of battery failures in the solid-state
battery for example, like charge, charge, charge, sorry,
space charge separation and element interfusion and biology
interface reaction and plus the electrochemical, mechanical,
mechanical deformation. Yeah, just take one example.
The last one, the mechanical deformation is pretty similar to
the some expansion of the solid. When the temperature changes,
its volume also changes. But in the battery when the
cycling starts, the volume of the electrolyte also changes and
this leads to lots of voids, cracks between the electrode
surface and the electrolyte electrolyte surface.
And this void will leads to the growth of dendrite.
And in order to mitigate this problem, people are adding
different materials. For example, in the early days
people add the nanoparticles and for the hybrid or semi
solid-state batteries, they are adding some liquid electrolytes.
And in order to mitigate this issue, this is how and where the
semi solid-state battery or hybrid solid-state battery come
from. Amazing.
Then also to understand a bit about because we already touched
on this, right, also I think the topic of safety, right, kind of
between these different technologies.
And again, if you could share a bit more about like, you know,
how can solid-state address it or maybe what can it not address
of the safety, maybe we can share it more about the
opportunities in that regard. My pleasure.
Yeah, basically regarding the safety, I think this is if this
is not the only one most important, but it must be one of
the most important issue regarding to underpin the energy
transition. Because the battery itself is a
electrochemical reactions. It happens always and it carries
energy and but when we use it in our daily life and I think more
and more like a fair hazard people see in the in nowadays.
And let's look at the intrinsic root cause of the summer
runaway. I see explosion of the liquid
electrolyte. What happened there?
Basically, from the very first cycling of the liquid Electro
liquid lism ion battery and in the R node, the lithium atoms
will release. One of the electrons became
lithium ion and then when it's charged and then the lithium
ions scatter, the electron became lithium atom.
Lithium atom is very, very active.
It react with the liquid electrolyte to form lithium
hydride. And this lithium hydride, the
hydrogen is very active. It's -1 valence.
It reacts nearly everything containing hydrogen to continue
proton to form the hydrogen. You can consider it as kind of a
hydrogen reservoir. Yeah.
And also in the battery industry, people know that each
of you when the our battery start work before the work, it
forms and deforms the SEI layers, interface layers.
And this layer basically is a decomposition and also the
formation of the, the the lithium assaults and our liquid
electrolyte, organic liquid electrolyte and will decompose,
it will decompose into carbon monoxide, methane, ethylene,
Acetylene and all these are explosive substance.
And therefore when our battery get self heated to set the
temperature normally around 200 Celsius degree, the cancelled
material start to release oxygen.
Look what we have in our system, we have hydrogen, we have carbon
monoxide, we have methylene, ethylene and Acetylene plus
oxygen and high temperature. And I say behind the stage, the
summer runaway, the fair headers of the battery, that is
explosive reaction. Yeah, this is what makes the
liquid lithium ion battery dangerous.
Yeah. For the solid-state battery, the
advantage is that, for example, if we use inorganic one like
oxide or sulfide, there it does not contain hydrogen.
Therefore, the very first step, the formation of the lithium
hydride, basically it is a eliminate in the polymer based
electrolyte. Because the interface is a solid
and solid, this kind of side reaction happens very slow.
We can also design the polymer electrolyte with containing less
or even less in non proton. Of course, this is kind of a
target in the future. By this way you improve the
intrinsic safety of the battery. Very good.
And of course, on the other hand though, I think one thing, it's
still very energy dense, right, like a battery.
So I think, yeah, that's there's still energy in there, right,
which can be released. But I think as you said, it's an
interesting approach. On the safety.
Another topic which I think a lot of people think about is
cost, right? I think especially for yeah, I
mean all kinds of applications again like you know having seen
this drastic cost reduction or lithium ion batteries or liquid
based lithium ion batteries really has enabled it for many
applications, right. And I think now the question has
been with solid-state also what will be the price point of that?
How competitive will it be? Will it become cheaper?
Will be more expensive? Niche might adopt it?
Maybe could share it more about the some of your assumptions in
that regard. Yeah, basically from the cost
perspective, and we can, let's say, many 2 cost drivers.
First is from material itself, second one is from the operation
and manufacturing process. And if we look at this also
depends on the battery, solar state, battery technology roots
for example like the oxide and the Cyrophide 1 and this kind of
material. And normally for example, like
take one example, like the oxide one, it requires normally high
temperature in order to form this kind of ceramic inorganic
structure. It's a very energy consumption
condensed one for the scarfied 1 is very sensitive to the oxygen
and moisture. You need this clean room.
But for both the technology route, there is no supply chain.
I say build up yet and all the manufacturing facility
equipments needed to be rebuilt, this will be very capital
intensive. Yeah.
But for the polymer one, this is it has the advantage of the in
terms of the raw materials because it's organic one, there
is no that's a rare metal or as expensive materials.
Pretty similar would be like in the liquid Electro liquid
lithium ion battery. Because for the liquid
electrolyte in the past 30 years since it's a commercialization,
the cost of the liquid lithium ion battery has the electrolyte
has dropped 97%. Yeah.
Could you imagine 97% thanks to the economy of scale.
Therefore for the polymer ones, it does not have this kind of
raw material as concerns. I believe that later on when the
scale build up and then the cost would be less, it dropped
sharply, pretty much like the liquid electrolyte in the past.
And in terms of the manufacturing of a process, the
polymer because it's soft and therefore it's largely
compatible with conventional liquid LISM ion battery.
Therefore we don't need to rebuild the overall supply
chain. For example, in our technology
and 80% of manufacturing process is compatible.
It's the same with the conventional liquid one and we
only have like around 20% which we apply the special step to
make the polymer electrolyte. Maybe we could share about this
20%. So what are the differences
between another process? This is for example in the
liquid electrolyte and the few in the liquid electrolyte, but
in our technology and our technology is in situ
polymerization, what we inject in there, that is precursor of
the polymer. In other words that precursor
plus its additives and also the some complex salts and it's kind
of eutectic liquid. Yeah, we inject this one and
then we leave the warm it up around like say merit the
temperature, elevated temperature, it will start
polymerization. Yeah, only this step is
different. OK.
And then this polymer you mentioned like because I mean, I
guess some people maybe argue like it's a polymer, a solid and
it's not as liquid, right? But I think kind of like so it's
this kind of in between, right? Like in some say maybe ceramic
only or this. But I think you you say you get
the best of both worlds, I assume from this, like you still
don't have a liquid, but you still have semi solid or it's a
polymer for you. Is it?
I think this really depends on molecular weight, right?
And for the liquid one, it has a small molecular weight and for
the polymer one, let's say the small molecular grow up with a
higher molecular weight, it became solid.
I think there is a very, very important concept.
Differentiation is that people sometimes regards the polymer
with the gel, but it's different.
The gear is that you have the polymer chains, which is long,
it entangles each other to form the three-dimensional voice.
It tracks the solvents, the liquid inside.
Therefore, when you heat it up or let's say adjust its pitch
value, acidity or acidity and then it will release the liquid.
But for polymer, it's just a soft, Yeah.
When you heat it up, it's still, I say it's a solid and it may be
merit, but it's another story, right?
But when you there's no, I say small molecular to release from
your system, yeah. OK.
That's interesting. And then kind of a bit of market
segmentation, right, Like where do you think solid-state will
come first will be most important?
Yeah. Maybe if you could segment the
market a bit for solid-state? Yeah.
For the Solar State battery, this is the new technology and
the new technology at the very beginning.
And of course without the AC, the scale, the price will be
high. And also I think the most
distinctive part is about its, its, its performance.
Yeah. For example, what we have here
is that from our battery and this is 65 ampere hour of the
Solar State battery, it has energy density of 315 Watt hour
per kilogram. And this battery and its porch
format realized no thermal propagation.
In other words, that we put these two batteries next to each
other and in the middle just with very thin layer of the
aerosphere for the insulation. No further, let's say heat
management, we suit in the modular, we heat up one of the
cell until it goes to explode and the other cell was kept
intact. Yeah, this is a is a very
special distinctive safety trick.
The other one is that about this battery's performance read
performance, because as you can imagine that is a decent ions
transport through the solid-state and therefore the
ions could not go that fast. This is also the reason people
regard Zarfide as a very, very promising, so to say the
technology because Zarfide transportation very fast.
But in our case and from our innovative, when I say material
design, we realized the 6C rate of the 100% DoD discharge.
And this share could realize around 1516 minutes of to charge
the share from 10 to 80%. Yeah.
So basically this is very unique.
Yeah, of course, this kind of comes with high cost.
Yeah, therefore it will go to the high end market.
Take one example, for example, like the flying taxi where it
has very, very high standards for safety and also the
requirements demands for the energy density and for the high,
let's say premium EV cars. And this is also something we
will target from right beginning.
And when this the skills build up and also let's say the
deployment on more and more EVs and the cost drives down that
will go to let's say the mass market.
So and maybe if you could compare now your because you
already had it showed there like your solid-state compared to
other solid states. Yeah.
As I mentioned that for the, let's see, the organic and
inorganic one, Yeah, For the inorganic 1 oxide and arphite,
in principle what happened, how it transports the Lisami is that
at elevated temperature for the oxide, all I say with a cold
pressing process for the cyrified one, it forms inorganic
structure. There are Christine structure,
there are lots of voids and basically it's like the mesh,
you can't understand like the mesh, this lithium ions has very
small in size. It can go through this void and
in this way this is how it transports the lithium ion.
But the problem is that because it's inorganic, it's a rigid
surface and with the electrode it's a rigid, rigid contact and
there are lots of interface issues.
This is the reason why people add the electrolyte in order to
minimize, mitigate this issue. And for the polymer ones, and
you know, the good thing is that at the working temperature of
the polymers and it's very soft, it can like say address this
interface issue very well. And we have very good contact.
However, at its working temperature, this soft material
polymer it, it is lack of mechanical strength, it makes it
less. The battery itself is not
stable. It's like the dodge between the
electrode. Therefore, when the battery get
compressed and you could like squeeze the electrolyte out of
your your electrodes and then it's internal shortcuts, it
would leads to the battery failure.
But in our technology, what we have, the uniqueness of our
technology is that we introduced a rigid skeleton and then this
skeleton provides the stability of the cell.
Yeah. And then we design the molecular
structure, We introduce the softer part, which is the
polymer and conductive polymer part and we do the in situ
polymerization. And when we fill in what we do
that we fill in the the precursor of our polymer and
then we do the polymerization in so doing that it's like you have
this electrolyte, the softer part is growing from the
electrode. Yeah.
Therefore, by this way you solve the this interfacial contact
issue very well. At the same time, you have the
rigid skeleton that provides the stability of the cell.
This is the uniqueness of our technology.
Interesting. And if I think about you know
lithium metal anodes, there also has been this approach right
that you kind of get the lithium metal built up in the cell.
So you have like first on the cathode and then you bring it on
the anode side. This is also something you could
do here as well, like you know, add also lithium metal to that
or. In fact, we have decent metal
and for example, in our laboratory, we have reached
let's say 4 generations of sorry battery technology.
The highest density from laboratory, it goes to up to
700, Yeah. And with the decent metal one,
it's our third generation 1 and we reached the energy density
between 400 to 500 Watt hour per kilogram.
And this battery has been used on a heavy pay, heavy, heavy
load joints. The payload is 25 kilogram and
for that joints and it can power the joints to fly for around one
hour. But in the standard that's
battery, it only flies around 20 minutes, less than 20 minutes.
Yeah, That is decent metal. But the lithium metals issue is
that it's second life and also lithium metal itself and it's
very sensitive to the moisture and oxygen.
We need to meet the moisture and oxygen and it forms lithium
hydride. Again, there are more lithium
and it's very dangerous. Yeah, but we have the technology
in house. Interesting.
And so you're 'cause I think that's to my last question, kind
of where are you right now in the progress and maybe what you
see in the future. So just understand the 4th
generation. What do you use then?
As an anode or? Anode this.
I don't know. So that's yes.
But then is it lithium metal on the end or what's?
No lithium metal? There's no lithium metal, yeah.
So what is the anode on the end? This anode is just like the
collectors and then basically all the lithium ions comes from
castle side, yeah. But you have to bring it on the
anode as well, right? Like you have to, yes, it's
building up on the anode. No, you don't really need to
build up the other day. What happened is there that you
have the DCM eyes from the castles and then through let's
say the charging process and the DCM eyes will go to the other
side is underneath these collectors and then you get
electrons and then to be reduced into the the the the the lease
item. Basically this is.
So it's lithometer on the end, no?
It does not form the large batch of the metal, but it's kind of
lease item now, OK. But like a thin layer of but.
A thin layer you can you can connect in situ formation of the
leasing metal. OK, Yeah, because that's what
I'm thinking. Yeah, that makes sense because I
just to kind of put into perspective.
So now you've done a lot of work, I can hear 4th generation
already, So now you're working on probably the next generation
already. Yeah.
And from. A research perspective, yeah.
So, so kind of what's like the road map you see maybe for your
own company and maybe also for people interested, like what do
you see to happen in solid-state the next couple of years, right?
Like what do you think is the sort of you as well from the
industry on solid-state? At least I can talk from our
perspective. Currently we are focusing on the
mass production of these cells because you can see this is 65
ampere 01 and this is ready for the commercial application.
Yeah. And for example, in the past
what we have that our technology was mainly used in the
demonstrative project at the bottom of Marina trenches and
under the water 10,000 meters more.
And our battery powered the Landers and continuously working
there for 26 days. It broke the word record
basically. Yeah, Under the water it powered
is AUV autonomous underwater vehicles and it's cruising there
for 198 days and on the ground. And also we validated its
application in the EV and on the UV and from the research project
and it finished more than 11,000 kilometers on road test and in
the Airs as I mentioned just now our third generation of the
battery powered drones to fly. And in the next step we are
basically optimizing our technology into this kind of
commercial available product and to serve for the different
market. Of course, you know, let's say
research activity road map as you mentioned and we have let's
say the these metal batteries which has any density to 500.
They have let's say the 4th generation one with other these
and reaches to more than 600 without per kilogram.
And these are, you know what I say, the pipelines, yeah.
Great, really exciting and I appreciate you sharing your
insights today with us. And I mean, exciting journey is
a startup. I know you're, you know, you're
making a lot of progress there and I think that's that's
exciting to see. So I'm excited to see some
updates and for the next generations.
And now we don't want to thank all of you listeners as well
today to listening to this podcast again to the Battery
Insiders podcast. My name is Simon Anger founder
and chef Battery associates. If you're interested for more of
these kind of episodes, please make sure to subscribe on
YouTube, Spotify, ever podcast or anywhere else you listen to
your podcast. Thanks again everyone, speak
soon. Bye bye.