Bay Area Company Creates Most Energy-Dense Battery to Date 

A company which began in the Palo Alto public library has succeeded in creating a new lithium-ion battery that holds roughly twice as much energy per gram as batteries in production today - all with the help of a $4M grant from the Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA-E).

Envia Systems built on work done at Argonne National Laboratory to design a battery that has achieved 400 watt-hours per kilogram and has been made into a 40-ampere cell in a large format that automakers can use by changing the composition/materials employed.

The team found that by incorporating new materials into the traditional lithium batteries, they could hold a greater charge.

According to the article in Scientific American, “…work done at Argonne National Laboratory found that including manganese in a mix of materials for the cathode—the electrode to which the lithium ions flock—better energy densities could be achieved. The team then switched focus to the anode—the electrode from which lithium ions flow to produce the electric current—and boosted its performance by incorporating silicon along with the typical graphite.”

These power-packed batteries could reduce the number of batteries needed per car by half and boost the range of electric car vehicles eliminating “range anxiety.”