Harvard’s 6,000-cycle EV battery that charges in 10 minutes gets funding boost
Early this year, a Harvard spinoff company, Adden Energy made headlines by developing a lithium-metal solid-state battery technology that could offer significant benefits.
According to the team, their solid-state battery could achieve a full charge in just 10 minutes and offer a charging cycle of at least 6,000 times.
Now, this breakthrough battery technology seems to be gaining a stronghold. Added Energy recently announced that it has secured a funding of $15 million to bring its ultra-fast charging batteries to the EV market.
“To scale production and bring this technology to car manufacturers, the company has raised $15M in a Series A round led by At One Ventures,” said Adden Energy in a press release.
Practical applications of solid-state batteries
This development marks a major step towards the practical application of solid-state batteries in various industries and commercial settings.
“Lithium metal anode batteries are considered the holy grail of batteries because they have ten times the capacity of commercial graphite anodes and could drastically increase the driving distance of electric vehicles,” Xin Li, Associate Professor of Materials Science at SEAS and a co-founder of Adden Energy, said in a
press release while introducing the technology.
Notably, this battery technology was initially unveiled by the researchers in January 2024. They focused on a challenging aspect of solid-state batteries: the formation of dendrites.
“These structures grow like roots into the electrolyte and pierce the barrier separating the anode and cathode, causing the battery to short or even catch fire,” mentioned the press release.
Adden Energy has cracked the code to controlling dendrites. Their solution to the problem is a self-healing separator. It helps lithium metal tackle the risk of dendrites and aids
batteries in performing better than traditional ones.
During experiments, Adden Energy successfully demonstrated the technology in a postage stamp-sized pouch cell, which retained 80% of its capacity after 6,000 cycles, surpassing the performance of current pouch cell batteries.
