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The dry room at Solid Power’s Louisville, Colorado, facility is abrasively bright, and yet the low, encompassing hum of the fans and chillers is oddly soothing. It’s here in the humidity- and contaminant-free production area where Solid Power produced their first full-size solid-state lithium-metal battery cells. The cells, a shining silver contrast to their surroundings, were a moonshot.
The technology, in theory, sounded too good to be true: a 10x jump in power (or 10x drop in size) from traditional lithium-ion cells. Solid Power was aiming for more modest gains in its first prototypes, but could still see an 80 percent improvement in the near future. Then on August 7, 2021, three engineers donned protective Tyvek “bunny suits,” entered the dry room, and drew voltage from the largest prototype lithium-metal battery to date.
Josh Buettner-Garrett, Solid Power’s chief technology officer, monitored from his office. He felt confident, but a little apprehensive: “We knew we could make something that looked like a battery cell, but there was still a chance we’d have a brick.”The lithium-ion battery that Solid Power hopes to make obsolete is already a modern marvel that earned its key researchers a Nobel Prize. And the preceding lithium-iodine cells of the 1970s lasted years longer than existing alkaline-based AA, AAA, or D batteries, thanks to the material’s unmatched energy density. They were, for example, an immediate boon for pacemaker patients, who could now rely on a battery for 10 years instead of two. But lithium’s greatest impact on batteries came with the rechargeable lithium-ion batteries in the 1990s for portable electronics and electric cars.
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Courtesy Solid Power
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