BioSolar, Inc. (OTCQB:BSRC)(“BioSolar” or the “Company”), a developer of breakthrough energy storage technology and materials, today announced that its additive technology exhibited significant improvement in battery capacity and capacity retention when applied to silicon (Si) anodes made from Si micro-particles, a form of raw silicon that is more cost effective than Si nano-particles.
The industry standard for Si anodes makes use of Si nano-particles, but the difficulty of manufacturing the raw Si nano-particle materials remains a costly challenge. In contrast, Si micro-particles are easier to manufacture at a significantly lower cost. Consequently, the lithium-ion battery industry has long sought to adopt the Si micro-particle material for the future in place of Si nano-particle materials, which will reduce cost and increase their bottom line. Unfortunately, anodes made from Si micro-particles are more prone to particle-to-particle pulverization during battery cycling due to volume expansion, thus slowing the industry’s progress on identifying a cost-effective solution.
Seeking to fill this market void, the evaluation of BioSolar’s Si additive technology with anodes made with Si micro-particle materials was facilitated by a global Si material supplier who provided several different grades of commercially available Si micro-particle materials. This evaluation, and subsequent construction and testing of prototype anodes and batteries, clearly demonstrated that the Company’s prototype batteries incorporating its additives significantly outperformed a similar Si anodes constructed without additives.
“Initial capacity of the prototype battery was 607mAh/g and still retained approximately 96% of its first capacity after 100 cycles in Li half-cell configuration, whereas an identical Si battery without the Company’s additives exhibited a sudden capacity drop after only a few cycles due to its intrinsic volume expansion issue associated with Si micro-particles,” said BioSolar CEO David Lee. “This is a clear indication that our additive technology may significantly contribute to the future of Si anode commercialization using Si micro-particles, further reducing the cost of lithium-ion batteries and making an immediate impact in the market for many emerging applications.”
BioSolar recently announced the development of an additive material technology to boost the performance of its Si anode for high power and fast charging applications such as an electric vehicle or personal electronics. The Company believes that its proprietary additive has the potential to improve all types of silicon anode materials such as Si carbon composite, Si oxide type, and Si alloys, and further experiments are being performed.
