Sion Power hits milestone with Licerion cell technology
The US battery developer Sion Power has published new progress of its Licerion battery cells with lithium metal anode developed in cooperation with BASF. The project is said to have reached a milestone with a multi-layer research pouch cell achieving a residual capacity of 70 per cent after more than 2,500 cycles.
After working on the technology for several years, Sion Power has made concrete progress in various versions of the pouch cell combining Licerion anode technology with common cathode materials such as LFP and NMC.
The company’s Licerion technology demonstrates more than 2500 cycles to 70% of the initial capacity. The results were achieved by a multilayer R&D pouch cell, charged in 180 minutes (C/3 rate), and wholly discharged (100% depth of discharge) in 45 minutes (4C/3 rate).
According to an independent test lab, under the identical conditions of C/3 and 4C/3, the current version of Sion Power’s 6 Ah large-format Licerion EV cell exceeded 800 cycles. The same 6 Ah cell can also be fast-charged to 80% capacity in less than 15 minutes.
The Licerion-EV, 17 Ah cell, has been independently verified with an actual (not projected) specific energy of 400 Wh/kg and energy density of 780 Wh/L. This is quite some progress– in 2018, the manufacturer spoke of energy densities of 500 Wh/kg or 1,000 Wh/l and 450 charging cycles.
“Finding a practical balance between specific energy, energy density, and cycle life is a large part of battery development,” says Tracy Kelley, CEO of Sion Power. Mr Kelley goes on to say, “This excellent R&D achievement demonstrates the headroom of our technology when it comes to developing products for commercial trucking and automotive applications.”
Sion has not yet revealed when the cells will move from the research stage to production but already has concrete plans in its collaboration with Cummins.
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