High performance, low-cost, built with silicon,
and available in today’s factories.
A revolutionary advanced bipolar battery architecture elevates cycle life and charge acceptance of conventional lead batteries to unprecedented levels. Silicon Joule replaces lead grids with silicon wafers to build lightweight, high-voltage batteries with existing production equipment. The technology revitalizes yesterday’s factories, allowing battery manufacturers to dramatically grow their revenues.
By integrating silicon wafers into an advanced bipolar battery architecture, Gridtential’s technology gives manufacturers the key to building the lead battery they have wanted for decades. It meets emerging markets’ need for long life, high power, lighter weight, and increased fire safety. Specially processed silicon wafer plates, when stacked-and-sealed into the Silicon Joule battery package, can eliminate non-uniform current density, increase material utilization, alleviate failure mechanisms, and improve performance of conventional lead electrochemistry.
The Silicon Joule battery can be produced in existing facilities with less lead, less floor space, and minimal investments. Silicon Joule is the ideal battery for a number of emerging applications, including residential and office energy storage, automobiles, personal mobility, industrial equipment, and reserve power.
Advanced bipolar battery architecture simplifies design and improves performance
Lead batteries frustrate consumers because they don’t last long and are too heavy. Gridtential’s engineers completely redesigned the lead battery to solve those two major problems. A bipolar configuration enables efficient current flow to improve cycle life, while silicon wafers replace lead grids to reduce battery weight.
In conventional battery designs, electrons flow across the battery plate, and high current is concentrated at the top contact. In Gridtential’s bipolar design, current flows through each silicon wafer evenly, making it a highly efficient conductor with a current path length equal to its thickness. Silicon Joule bipolar technology simplifies battery design to reduce failure mechanisms and improves cycling performance of conventional lead-acid electrochemistry without new material innovations.
Design advantages:
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- Improved energy density and power performance for energy storage and automotive applications.
- Simple stack-and-seal construction enables high voltage (24V, 36V, 48V) and lightweight battery modules.
- Efficient current flow due to short conduction path through the thickness of the silicon wafer plate.
- Mitigates failure mechanisms such as grid corrosion to multiply cycle life of conventional lead-acid active materials.
- Unleashes potential PSoC and DCA performances of conventional lead electrochemistry.
Silicon wafers replace lead grids to reduce weight and increase power
The power in Silicon Joule lies in the silicon wafer, a lightweight and lower cost material produced by the solar industry that continues the renewable energy revolution.
Replacing inactive lead with silicon eliminates 35% of the lead used in production and reduces battery weight by up to 35%. Each wafer is specially processed to make it the perfect plate for bipolar lead technologies. The silicon wafer redirects electron flow inside the battery and seamlessly integrates with lead electrochemistry to boost energy and power performance.
Silicon as a battery plate material:
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- Light and stiff, 75% less dense than lead, translates to up to 35% reduction in weight.
- Impervious to sulfuric acid corrosion and extends battery life.
- Doped silicon wafer plates occupy a tiny fraction of battery resistance to enable high-power applications.
- Efficient thermal conductor diffuses hot spots during cycling and avoids thermal runaway.
- Compatible with low-cost, high-volume solar processing technologies available today.
Silicon Joule leaps over historical obstacles of bipolar lead technologies
The battery industry has been wrestling for decades with different materials and designs to build the next generation bipolar lead battery. But conflicting material and design requirements have always kept it out of reach. Gridtential’s engineers borrowed ideas from other industries to develop Silicon Joule technology, designing a unique combination of wafer processing and battery packaging innovations. The years of waiting for that next generation lead battery are over.
A proprietary treatment process overcomes significant challenges from silicon integration, battery electrochemistry and mechanical packaging.
Materials and packaging advantages:
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- Lightweight, stiff silicon wafer plates guarantee uniform compression and maximize electrode utilization.
- “Texture etch” of sliced wafers removes surface damage and improves mechanical strength.
- Contact layer to maintain electrical conductivity, widen electrochemical stability, and reduce side reactions.
- Lead alloy adhesion layer designed to create intimate contact with lead electrodes, minimize battery resistance, and eliminate side reactions.
- Each bipolar plate is edge sealed to prevent intercell shorts which lead to efficiency loss.
- Efficient thermal management by an elegant stack-and-seal battery package delivers robust operation under harsh environments.
Superior performance with existing electrochemistry
The superior material properties of silicon combined with the efficient bipolar package yield great performance improvements. The technology achieves a 4X improvement in cycle life and 5X improvement in dynamic charge acceptance when compared to existing monoblock products with conventional chemistry.
Better performance translates to these competitive advantages in emerging markets:
Automotive
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- Lightweight, high-voltage, and fast charging batteries will power energy-hungry electronics
- Efficiently accepts charge from regenerative braking systems without compromising safety under harsh environments
Residential energy storage
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- Long life
- Low cost
- Increased safety
Personal mobility vehicles
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- Long cycle life
- Fast charge times
- Safe from fire hazards
Industrial equipment and reserve power systems
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- Reliability
- Safety
Reconfigure your factory and scale up production today
Silicon Joule technology is designed with ease of production in mind. The silicon wafer plates are processed by commercial solar manufacturing equipment at high volume and low cost. The technology uses the same active materials to achieve cycle life and charge acceptance performance unmatched by conventional battery designs. Only minimal investment is needed to start production because a simple stack-and-seal assembly eases the transition. Manufacturers use the same filling machines and formation circuits in the factory.
If we want to build an emission-free future with better batteries today, we don’t have years to wait for multibillion dollar new factories to be built. Silicon Joule batteries can be made today.
Manufacturer benefits:
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- Compatible with existing pasting and formation technologies central to lead electrochemistry.
- Purchased silicon bipoles eliminate grid casting operations to increase factory floor space utilization.
- Stack-and-seal assembly replaces complex cast-on-strap and welding processes to improve production yield.
- Manufacturers retain their differentiations in paste formulation.
Silicon Joule Technology gets the lead out while increasing energy storage
See how Silicon Joule compares with conventional AGM battery cycle performance:
400
Cycles
2000+
Cycles
