News

Solicore Intros Digitally-Printed Battery and Gains Series A1 Funding

November 18, 2013 by Jeff Shepard

Solicore, Inc. in cooperation with an unidentified strategic investor, has jointly-developed the world's first digitally-printed 3V thin-film battery. The digitally-printed battery utilizes Solicore intellectual property and patents to enable high volume, digitally printed battery production for key target markets. In addition, this new technology innovation will dramatically change the ability to produce and deploy custom battery shapes and sizes to meet the varying needs of the marketplace.

At the same time, the company announced the close of its Preferred Series A1 round of financing led by New Science Ventures, a new investor committing $4 million in capital, with participation continuing from existing investors such as R.R. Donnelley, Rogers Corporation, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Braemar Energy Ventures, Firelake Capital, OPG Ventures Inc. and Hydro-Quebec CapiTech. These key investors all recognize Solicore’s tremendous growth potential through strong customer demand, well-established market position, and unique combination of partners, technology, and products.

"Our efforts to create a digitally printed battery has enabled Solicore to create yet another scalable printing process not only to meet any demand for volume that the market could require, but also to provide quick turnaround for custom battery design requirements", stated Dan Tillwick, COO of Solicore. "In the past there was concern relative to the overall market's ability to scale the supply chain into the hundreds of millions of units, as well as supply the variety of custom designs, that is no longer an area of concern due to the digitally printed battery."

“To advance our position as the market leader in providing embedded power solutions, Solicore felt it was critical to expand our market reach further to support the powered card industry, but equally in support of the medical devices and sensor markets”, stated Dave Corey, CEO of Solicore. “We firmly believe the market demand for our products is at a tipping point of explosive growth”.

“A key investment target for New Science Ventures is to seek companies with a unique and disruptive technology that is poised for explosive growth. We see Solicore – with its leading embedded power platform, an impressive set of worldwide customers and an experienced team – as such a company”, commented Vivek Mohindra, Partner at New Science Ventures, who has also joined the Solicore Board of Directors.

Solicore continues to push forward technology innovation with enabling various thin-film battery manufacturing methods. Solicore currently produces millions of coated thin-film batteries in their state-of-the-art manufacturing facility in Lakeland, Florida. In addition, Solicore jointly developed the first-of-its-kind, screen printed thin-film battery in 2011. Today, Solicore announces that it has developed the world's first digitally printed thin film lithium battery. Both screen and digitally printed battery production processes were designed in close collaboration with Solicore's strategic investors and joint development partners.

The focus of these efforts has been to establish the necessary capacity to enable the key markets requiring thin film batteries including powered cards, medical patches and powered RFID/Sensors. The production options now offer the marketplace both primary and secondary sourcing alternatives, with scale and flexibility to support all demand requirements and programs.