Riverside County Success Story

SiLi-ion’s technology is one of only six fundamentally unique approaches to next-generation battery technologies globally. What sets SiLi-ion apart from its competition is simple: sustainable materials and ease of integration that eliminates the need for extensive capital investments for battery manufacturers.

The company produces a novel high-capacity silicon-carbon “drop-in” additive for Li-ion battery manufacturers that can increase the storage capacity of their devices. While other disruptive silicon-based innovations aim at completely replacing the state-of-the-art graphite anode and hence require a complete re-design or upgrade of the existing factories and battery architecture, SiLi-ion’s vision is intervening at the “raw materials level”. By adding a small amount of our compound (e.g. 10% by weight) in the established graphite electrode fabrication process they can boost the storage capacity of the anode up to 65% with respect to state-of-the-art. This “drop-in” strategy is simple, cost-effective and eliminates the need for extensive capital investments for the battery manufactures.

The company’s commercialization effort is currently supported by the California Energy Commission via a CalSEED Phase I award.

A patent protecting the IP of the production process for the SiLi-ion additive has been filed, and the material technology has been extensively tested at lab-scale and by a third-party battery validation company (Polaris Battery Labs, Oregon, USA). The testing demonstrates the use of SiLi-ion’s compound for the fabrication of high energy-density Lithium-ion batteries. The proprietary technology uses know-how and scalable manufacturing processes and equipment. Unlike our competitors, it does not require exotic materials/processes and can be easily integrated into existing manufacturing. Building on this momentum, Hatch is leading fundraising for a $400,000 seed round to match the grant money currently available to the startup. SiLi-ion’s commercialization effort originally got off the ground through $1.3 million in grants from the California Energy Commission and National Science Foundation.