Sila Nano, headquartered in Silicon Valley, California, USA, announced on January 26th that it has received a new round of financing of $590 million, which is the company's F-round financing. After the financing, the company's valuation reached $3.3 billion, and it should not be far from going public. Combined with this round of financing, the company has accumulated $875 million in financing since its establishment in 2011. The investors in this company include well-known brands such as Daimler, Samsung, and Ningde New Energy. Ningde New Energy may sound similar to Ningde Times, but it is actually two different companies. However, Ningde New Energy was the former parent company of Ningde Times, which later spun off and became independent.



The manufacturers that have reached a strategic partnership with Sila Nano include Daimler and BMW. Looking back at Quantum Scape, another solid-state battery company in Silicon Valley that just went public two months ago, which received $200 million in investment from Volkswagen before and after, it is evident that traditional car manufacturers are actively expanding into the new energy vehicle market to cope with future trends in electric vehicle development.



Sila Nano announced that it will use this round of investment to build a plant in North America, with a target annual production of 100000 megawatt hours of silicon negative electrode materials. It is expected to be put into production in 2024 and applied to partner electric vehicles starting in 2025. Sila Nano expects the global annual battery production to reach 2 million megawatt hours by 2030, with nearly 1 billion electric vehicles on the road. By 2050, the global annual production will reach 30 million megawatt hours, which, along with other energy storage technologies, can completely replace petrochemical energy to achieve global carbon neutrality, allowing human society to rely entirely on renewable energy.



The silicon negative electrode material developed by Sila Nano is also based on an internal reserved gap structure, and it is claimed that this material can achieve 100% replacement of graphite negative electrodes in the future, thereby increasing the negative electrode energy storage density by several times. However, it still exists in the form of silicon carbon mixture, as further research and engineering optimization are needed over a long period of time to achieve the goal of 100% replacement of graphite negative electrodes.



SilaNano claims that traditional lithium batteries currently have a ceiling in energy density -720 watt hours per liter, as the lowest cost of batteries can only be reduced to $100 per kilowatt hour. If the theoretical cost of batteries is to be further reduced, it is necessary to search for materials with higher energy storage density. The new generation material for the negative electrode is silicon, while the future substitute material for the positive electrode may be metal fluoride or sulfur. If both positive and negative electrode materials are upgraded to higher energy density options, the theoretical cost of the battery can be further reduced to $50 per kilowatt hour. To achieve this level of low cost, it is possible to achieve independent profitability of wind energy storage.







At present, there are two main types of positive electrode materials for lithium batteries: lithium iron phosphate and ternary lithium (nickel cobalt manganese lithium). They store lithium ions in a way similar to graphite negative electrodes, known as intercalation - the electrode material forms a three-dimensional lattice structure, and lithium ions can be inserted into the gaps of the lattice without forming strong forces (chemical bonds) with the electrode material, which can be understood as physical embedding. This storage method can store low lithium ion density, resulting in the battery's energy density not being able to reach a very high level.







New positive electrode materials, such as metal fluoride or sulfur, are stored by forming an alloy like structure with lithium ions (as shown in the figure below), similar to the way silicon negative electrode materials store lithium ions. This storage method forms chemical bonds between the electrode material and lithium atoms, which is a strong force that can store high-density lithium ions, greatly improving the energy density of the battery. From the perspective of the development requirements of future batteries, increasing energy density is an inevitable trend, so the research and production of these new electrode materials have received great attention. That's also why SilaNano can attract such a high amount of financing.









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Reference:


one https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/26/sila-nanotechnologies-raises-590m-to-fund-battery-materials-factory/

two https://silanano.com/news/futureofenergystorage/



Author Introduction:

Dr. Xie Wei, Bachelor and Master of Materials Science from Tsinghua University, and Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Texas (Austin) in the United States. Mainly engaged in the development of energy storage batteries, has held important positions in multinational corporations and startups, led multiple research and development projects funded by the US Department of Energy, and won the 2013 US Annual 100 Best Research and Development Technology Award. Published 17 papers in top journals in materials science and energy storage, served as a reviewer for 5 international journals, and has applied for 17 international invention patents.