ENWIRES :Lowest-Cost "Silicon-in-Graphite" Anode Materials for Batteries

With the massive build-up of battery production capacities, especially in Europe, the sector is faced with the triple challenge of massively expanding its production capacity, increasing the energy density while reducing the price of batteries to meet the growing needs of EVs. This being the case, the battery industry needs to drastically reduce its carbon footprint not to displace end-of-pipe emissions with embodied emissions in battery manufacturing. In all these perspectives, Graphite anodes are becoming a bottleneck and are being replaced with silicon anodes.

Battery makers and automotive OEMs are looking for additional suppliers to build a competitive supply structure for silicon anodes. To that end, a French-based chemical company, Enwires is leading the commercialization of breakthrough silicon anode materials for Li-ion batteries. Enwires provides silicon that cost-effectively replace graphite and make it effortless for battery makers to use silicon. Enwires’ proprietary ‘silicon-in-graphite’ design delivers outstanding battery performances, seamlessly integrates into customer cell chemistries, and its production can be easily scaled at GWh-level. When produced at scale, Enwires’ material products will come at a substantial price and carbon footprint advantage for battery makers.

“We provide highly cost-optimized silicon materials that make graphite anode replacement effortless for battery makers,” says Dr. Olga Burchak, co-founder and CEO of Enwires.

The firm has taken a different approach to designing and optimizing the manufacturing of silicon anodes using silicon nanoworms, a shorter, cheaper (and smarter) version of silicon nanowires. Dr. Burchak explains that silicon nanowires are not new as this material has been widely described as a promising form factor for managing the critical volume expansion of silicon. However, silicon nanowires remain intrinsically costly to produce compared to silicon nanoparticles.

This is where nanoworms come into play:

“Nanoworms offer the best of both worlds”, says Dr. Burchak. “They natively manage silicon expansion and make it simple to design very cost-effective yet highly efficient ‘silicon-in-graphite’ materials that are directly compatible with existing electrode slurry processing”. Enwires’s silicon materials will not only help decrease battery costs or improve cycle life but also reduce embodied emission. The company’s materials can store several times more lithium per gram than conventional graphite anode materials; this performance benefit translates into a much lower carbon footprint per kWh. Furthermore, developing an energy-efficient thus cost-efficient process is the best way to make sure that adding Enwires’s silicon to batteries will tangibly cut carbon emissions. “We are committed to build the world’s greenest battery materials to advance the low-carbon transition” says Dr. Burchak.

Enwires’ mission is strongly steered by Dr. Burchak, who along with Peter Reiss, head of the laboratory for energy nanomaterials at CEA Grenoble, devised an economically viable way to produce nano-silicon using only cheap chemicals and bulk reactor technologies. As a very committed personality, Olga has set up the company Enwires to further develop silicon anode materials for batteries using the same lean engineering approach. Enwires’ ambitions were clear from the start: making highly cost-effective battery materials to advance the low-carbon transition.

Silicon can not only boost graphite in current battery generations, but they can also replace lithium metal in all-solid-state batteries. In this regard, Enwires is also developing a silicon-dominant anode material that is adapted to the specific manufacturing requirement of solid-state batteries. “We do believe that silicon also have a key role to play in accelerating the market introduction of solid-state batteries. We are working on several very promising research projects toward this direction,” says Dr. Burchak.