Sakuú Corporation Develops 3Ah Lithium Metal SSB
Sakuú Corporation announces the development of a new solid-state battery with an improved energy capacity and efficiency.
Formerly known as KeraCel Inc, Sakuú Corporation, is a market-leader in automated multi-process additive manufacturing (AM). The company offers its customers multi-method and multi-material three dimensional (3D) printing platforms for high volume production. Sakuú’s customers can now create solid-state batteries, sensors, microfluidic devices, and other products while reducing the cost of manufacturing.
Recently, the company announced the development of its new first generation 3Ah lithium-metal solid-state battery (SSB). Sakuú has posited that the new battery is able to equal the current standard lithium-ion battery technology on the market and could possibly be better.
Sakuú’s SSB technology is suitable for mobility, aerospace, consumer, and many other applications. Image used courtesy of Sakuú
Sakuú’s SSB Technology
Sakuú’s SSBs can be used for a variety of applications including drones, wearables, electric vehicles, and more. Manufactures can also design and produce IoT (internet of things) sensors and pathogen detection microreactors. The battery incorporates industry standard cathode materials and has been designed to accommodate higher voltage cathodes should customer needs change in future. This has the potential to generate 25% more energy. Sakuú’s SSBs also feature a lightweight design and compact size (being 30% lighter and half the size of current LiB technology). They use lithium-metal, are composed of 30 sub-cells, and a proprietary printed ceramic separator. The batteries have also been designed to be more cost-effective and recyclable.
In a news release from last month, the CEO and Founder of Sakuú, Robert Bagheri, said, “Over the last year, we have improved our battery energy capacity by a factor of 100 and our volumetric energy efficiency over 12 times and are planning to begin volume production of the batteries in early 2022 to meet the needs of our strategic partners.” Bagheri commented further, “We developed this first generation of SSB’s to prove the viability of our battery technology in anticipation of the Sakuú 1000 advanced AM platform,” said Robert Bagheri CEO and Founder, Sakuú.
Sakuú sources raw materials from the local area to ease the burden on other companies and to speed up delivery for customers.
Sakuú’s AM Platform
Traditionally, solid-state batteries are made with layers of ceramic. This can increase the volume of materials used and the cost of manufacturing. Additionally, high-volume manufacturing is not easily attainable. Sakuú’s AM solution uses laser powder bed fusion and material jetting. The combination of these two processes allows several materials (such as ceramics and metals) to be laid down in the same layer.
The company uses a powder-to-powder system that involves the crushing and reformation of products into a new device. Excess powder left over from the process can then be recycled for the next process. The powder system is more economical concerning material use and helps to reduce the ecological footprint of production.
The company makes claims of 100 times energy capacity ‘improvement’, what was this “capacity” before, 3mAh? There’s a disconnect here that can easily be taken care of by publishing the cell voltage and going as far as to publish the gravimetric energy density in Wh/kg. Cut to the chase, publish Wh/kg and what the cycling ability of this chemistry until the battery pack degrades to 80% SOC ability.