Battery material for the sodium-ion revolution
Powerful, safe and environmentally friendly - sodium-ion batteries have many advantages over conventional batteries. As they do not contain any critical raw materials such as lithium or cobalt, they could also make applications such as stationary energy storage and electromobility much cheaper. However, the energy storage materials required for production are still lacking. Litona, a start-up founded at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), wants to produce them on an industrial scale.
Prussian white, a "chemical relative" of the well-known Prussian blue dye, is essentially based on sodium, iron and manganese. "It can be used as an energy storage material at the cathode, i.e. the positive pole of a sodium-ion battery," says Sebastian Büchele from the Institute for Applied Materials at KIT and founder of Litona. "Such batteries are inexpensive and all the raw materials they contain are widely available. I am convinced that we will soon be able to use them en masse in electric vehicles and grid storage systems." However, the question is who will produce them. The European industry is facing a major problem here. "At the moment, it is difficult even for research institutions to procure sufficient quantities of Prussian white. Hardly any company in Europe produces it," reports the scientist. "Research and transfer of the pioneering sodium-ion technology is extremely slowed down as a result."
Prussian white for mass production
As Büchele also wanted to research sodium-ion technology, he decided to synthesize Prussian white himself. This work not only produced a high-quality cathode material at KIT, but also an innovative process for its production. With the aim of serving a larger market, he founded the start-up Litona together with chemist Tom Bötticher. "Competitors had problems scaling up the production of Prussian white analogs," says Büchele. "We believe that we have solved these. We have also developed methods to further enhance the value of our material."
Opportunity for the European industry
Litona used the KIT infrastructure to validate the scaling steps and optimize the material for use in next-generation batteries. In the meantime, however, the two founders are already working on setting up their own state-of-the-art production facility. "We deliberately chose Germany as a location," emphasizes co-founder Bötticher. "We believe in the potential of European battery production. When it comes to lithium-ion batteries, Asia has been ahead in recent years. Sodium-ion technology is now a huge opportunity for a new start in Europe. We don't just want to sit back and watch."
Note: This article has been translated using a computer system without human intervention. LUMITOS offers these automatic translations to present a wider range of current news. Since this article has been translated with automatic translation, it is possible that it contains errors in vocabulary, syntax or grammar. The original article in German can be found here.
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