US Military Invests In New Silicon Battery, Possible EV Connection Emerging

By Tina Casey

July 23, 2024

The US Department of Defense has been notoriously cautious when the topic turns to vehicle electrification, but it has been on the prowl for next-generation portable batteries. In the latest development, the US firm NanoGraf has just announced production-scale orders for its new silicon battery, designed with military use in mind. Powering portable electronic gear for soldiers is the immediate aim, but hints of an EV battery have also been emerging.

Unpacking The US Military Battery Burden

The electronic military gear of today requires batteries, and plenty of them, to power the increasing load of portable electronic gear carried by soldiers. They also need to have extra batteries on hand in case of loss or damage, adding even more to the burden.

A lighter, longer lasting, and more reliable battery would help ease the load, and that’s where NanoGraf comes in. In 2020, the Chicago-based firm announced a $1.65 million partnership with DOD to develop a silicon battery for portable electronic gear. The new battery sports a silicon anode as an alternative to the graphite traditionally used in lithium-ion batteries.

The idea of a silicon battery has been cooking for a while. NanoGraf spun off from a research project under the wing of the US Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory and an entrepreneurship program at Northwestern University all the way back in 2012.

In 2016 the Energy Department’s Office of Scientific and Technical Information took an enthusiastic dive into NanoGraf’s silicon battery. At the time, NanoGraf was still operating under its former name, SiNode.

“SiNode’s core technology was developed at one of the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRCs), the Center for Electrical Energy Storage (CEES) at Argonne National Laboratory (in partnership with Northwestern University) and allows a battery to store a greater amount of lithium, thereby charging faster and lasting longer than conventional batteries,” OSTI explained.

Specifically, OSTI noted that the capacity of SiNode’s silicon concoction could be tweaked to provide for a range of capacities between 1000 mAh/g and more than 2500 mAh/g, far outstripping the 372 mAh/g capacity of graphite anodes.

Northwestern University has also began keeping an eye on NanoGraf since the early days.

“Formerly SiNode Systems, NanoGraf pursues advances in Lithium-ion battery anodes to transform a wide range of industries from consumer electronics to electric vehicles,” Northwestern explains.

“SiNode’s anode technology utilizes a composite of silicon nano-particles within a patent-pending graphene scaffolding system that increases a battery’s energy density (5-7 times) and reduces the charging time of a lithium-ion battery (up to a factor of 10),” they add.

A Silicon Battery With A Graphene Secret

If you caught that thing about graphene scaffolding, that’s the key. Graphene is an ultra-thin but super-strong version of graphite. You can DIY graphene by using a piece of sticky tape to lift a sheet of atoms from a chunk of graphite. That’s more or less what its discoverers did when they first described the material in 2004 (see lots more graphene background here).

Another hint about EV applications emerged in 2019, when Argonne announced that its Center for Electrochemical Energy Science at Argonne National Laboratory won an award from the Energy Department for its work on the silicon-graphene anode.

Putting that aside for now, the latest news from Nanograf appeared on July 16, when the company announced initial orders to produce its M38 18650 silicon battery for the US military. Though not releasing any names, NanoGraf described the orderers as “leading global aerospace and defense technology contractors.”

The batteries will be used mainly for hand-held radios. NanoGraf expects them to last up to 15% longer than the batteries currently in use.

“In January, NanoGraf announced a new contract with the U.S. Army worth up to $15 million to develop cross-compatible batteries for soldiers in the field, which brought NanoGraf’s total U.S. Department of Defense funding to $45 million,” the company also noted.

Part of that funding went to construct a new NanoGraf battery factory in Chicago. “Once in operation, it will be the first high-volume manufacturing facility of its kind in the US,” CleanTechnica noted.

What About Those New Silicon EV Batteries?

Yes, what about them. In 2021 CleanTechnica took note of DOD’s vehicle decarbonization journey, noting that “NanoGraf let word slip that it reached a record-setting ‘breakthrough in energy density of silicon anode cells enable longer-lasting, lighter weight, and shortened charge cycles for consumer electronics, electric vehicles, military equipment and more.'”

To be clear, the DOD is nowhere near electrifying its fleet, certainly not its tanks. Back in 2010, the US Army explored the idea of using fuel cells in an Abrams tank, but that was just to provide electricity for auxiliary functions.

Non-tactical vehicles, on the other hand, are fair game. The US Army Corps of Engineers, for example, is taking a look at a sporty new EV for off-road use related to its infrastructure projects and emergency response.

As for the silicon EV battery angle, on June 10th, NanoGraf credited the Defense Department, among others, with supporting the development of its new 800 watt-hour per liter (Wh/L) silicon battery. The new battery “provides compelling benefits for virtually any application — from consumer electronics to electric vehicle batteries to the batteries that power the equipment soldiers use during operations,” NanoGraf enthused.

“One of the biggest opportunities for more energy-dense batteries lies with electric vehicles, where ‘range anxiety’ is a major impediment to mainstream adoption,” NanoGraf emphasized.

“NanoGraf’s new cell technology could immediately provide a boost to electric vehicles, such as the Tesla Model S, which would last approximately 28 percent longer on a single charge compared to similar vehicles on the road today,” the company further asserted.

Indeed! Good luck selling prospective Tesla buyers on that proposition. Here in the US, the bloom has been off the Tesla rose for a variety of reasons, and last week’s report in the Wall Street Journal didn’t help much. According to the paper’s sources, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has committed to spending $45 million per month to help former President Trump over the finish line on Election Day 2024.

That remains to be seen. On July 22, USA Today columnist Chris Brennan advised waiting until the check clears. In the meantime, why should NanoGraf stop at Tesla? NanoGraf designed the new silicon battery as a drop-in replacement that any number of EV battery can simply, well, drop in.