24M is committed to the research and development of semi-4LR44 battery

According to foreign media reports, "24M", a battery research and development company founded by Chinese scientist Yet-Ming Chiang, recently received $21.8 million (about RMB 150 million) in Series D financing. So far, the company has raised a total of $71.8 million (about RMB 490 million).

24M is committed to the research and development and production of semi-4LR44 battery. Compared with traditional liquid lithium batteries, 24M's batteries are called "semi-solid" batteries because their "heart" - the electrode material is between liquid and solid.

Compared with Tesla's battery technology, the battery developed by 24M has higher energy density and storage capacity. It is said that this semi-solid lithium battery transmits 10 times more power per unit volume than current batteries, but the cost is only one-third of current lithium batteries.

Benchmark battery company goes bankrupt

Ye-Ming Chiang is a Taiwanese American, a member of the American Academy of Engineering, a member of the Academia Sinica, and a professor of materials at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

He was born in Taiwan, his father was a locomotive engineer. When he was 6 years old, Jiang Yeming's father brought him to the United States.

Jiang Yeming was very good at studying. After graduating from high school, he was admitted to MIT. He met his Japanese-American wife at school, and then settled down in MIT.

Jiang Yeming has been engaged in research on battery materials. Thomson Reuters released the Hall of Fame list of the world's top 100 materials scientists from 2000 to 2010 in 2011. In this list of the best 100 materials scientists determined based on the citation rate of research papers published in the past 10 years, Jiang Yeming ranked 66th in the world.

He founded several companies in cooperation with venture capital on the platform of MIT, among which the lithium battery company A123 is the most famous, which made him gain countless reputation and status in the industry. However, this company that won the largest IPO in 2009 went bankrupt just 3 years later.

A123 was founded in 2001 with only 100,000 US dollars in start-up capital and only 5 employees. By 2007, the total number of employees had reached 250, and the total assets exceeded 100 million US dollars. In September 2009, it was listed on NASDAQ, raising 380 million US dollars, and was recognized as the world's best automotive lithium battery manufacturer. However, in October 2012, A123 suddenly announced that it had filed for bankruptcy protection with the Delaware Bankruptcy Court in the United States. At this time, its global number of employees exceeded 2,000, including 770 employees in China.

A123's main product is lithium iron phosphate power battery. A large lithium battery is a series of countless small batteries. A123 can make small batteries into uniform nano-scale small particles, and can maintain overall stability when the total number of small batteries is greatly increased. At the same size and stability, the number of A123 small batteries is 100 times that of ordinary lithium batteries. As a benchmark company in the US clean energy automobile industry at the time, A123 attracted a large number of investors, including Sequoia, Procter & Gamble, Motorola, and even the US Department of Energy signed a $15 million new energy development contract with it.

However, the economic situation at the time determined that few people were willing to pay more for the concept of new energy vehicles than gasoline vehicles, and A123 was a luxury representative among expensive electric vehicles. A123 made the best quality power battery in the world, but it was also the battery with the worst cost performance in the world. Its main buyer was Fisker, which was famous for its luxury cars. For batteries with the same performance parameters, A123 sold them at 2-3 times the price of ordinary lithium batteries just because their products were more stable, cooler, and smaller. This was obviously not feasible.

Innovating battery production methods

After the failure of A123, Jiang Yeming put more energy into 24M. 24M is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, just a few blocks away from MIT.

Having learned the painful lesson of A123, at 24M, Jiang Yeming wanted to produce more efficient lithium batteries at a lower cost.

There are usually two ways to increase the capacity of lithium batteries: one is to increase the number of battery cells, and the other is to increase the energy density. If the battery cells are increased, metals such as nickel and cobalt will increase in the same proportion, and the marginal cost is very high. Jiang Yeming's initial solution was "liquid flow battery". To increase the capacity of liquid flow battery, it only needs to connect a larger liquid tank, which is very low cost. But to make the cost competitive enough, a liquid flow tank as huge as a nuclear power plant is required, which is obviously impossible.

After a control experiment, Jiang Yeming and his colleagues found that the battery capacity of static battery can still remain very stable after tens of thousands of charge and discharge cycles. So they began to think that static battery may be the right direction of development.

After unremitting exploration in the dark, they finally built a production platform purely manually, which brought about qualitative changes in the energy density and production speed of the battery. The new battery design eliminates 80% of inactive, non-energy-storing components (such as copper, aluminum, and plastic), significantly reducing battery costs and the energy required for charging. The electrode thickness is five times greater than that of ordinary lithium batteries, which greatly increases the energy density of lithium batteries. They call this new type of battery a semi-solid lithium battery.

The new formula of the battery is more flexible, can be bent, folded, and even penetrate a bullet without failing, making the lithium battery safer and more durable. At the same time, because the organic solvent is removed in the new design, the battery is easier to recycle. In addition to simplifying the internal structure of the lithium battery and improving the performance of the lithium battery, the new battery design also changes the production process of the lithium battery.

The manufacturing of traditional lithium batteries still uses the equipment and methods of the tape production line in the 1990s, which is very inefficient. The drying process alone takes at least 22 hours, the production line is very long, and the factory often needs to be as large as an aircraft warehouse. It costs more than 100 million US dollars to build a battery factory, which is a huge investment. For example, XALT operates a modern, efficient battery factory in Michigan, USA, with an investment of $300 million; while Tesla's "super battery factory" in Nevada cost $5 billion.

However, the new production platform developed by 24M is only the size of a refrigerator, and the factory covers 1/5 of the previous area, and the construction capital is only 1/10 of the original. Small factories can be more flexibly deployed and respond quickly to customer needs. At the same time, their modular production methods can be accurately replicated in proportion and quickly expand production.

Traditional lithium-ion battery production requires a multi-step process, which involves mixing, coating, drying, and recycling of electrolyte solvents in batteries. The 24M battery technology reduces many of the steps commonly used in electric vehicle battery production, depositing the electrolyte used in the battery as a solvent on both sides of the battery, thereby reducing the time and cost required for production.

24M said that it has produced lithium-ion batteries with an energy density of 350Wh/kg in the laboratory and is studying batteries that can reach 500Wh/kg. Semi-solid battery technology can ensure longer driving range, lower battery costs and faster manufacturing time. 24M has also decided to enter the grid energy storage market, which they believe will not only help users better utilize wind and solar energy, but also compete with other automakers such as Tesla, Daimler, BMW, Renault, and Nissan.

Like A123, 24M is favored by the capital market. Currently, there are many investors, including Charles River Venture Capital, Northbridge Ventures, PTT, the national oil company of Thailand, and IHI, a Japanese manufacturing company. The investors in this round of D are two Japanese companies - ceramic and electronics giant Kyocera Group and textile and trading company Itochu Corporation.

As early as 2016, 24M ranked 23rd among the 50 "smartest" companies in the world in 2016 selected by the American media MIT Technology Review, saying that it has produced more efficient lithium batteries at a lower cost, with a cost reduction of 50%.

24M focuses not only on the technical level of battery iteration, but also on the innovation of the entire battery production method. If this new production process that greatly saves costs can be successfully launched on the market, it may give rise to a revolution in the battery manufacturing industry.

Today, Jiang Yeming, with his signature gray and white crew cut, is already in his sixties. I hope the story of A123 will not repeat itself. Let us wait and see what the future of 24M will be like.

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