BINGHAMTON, N.Y., Oct. 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — Natrion, a leader in the research and development of next-generation battery technologies, announced today that a joint proposal that the company prepared in partnership with Medgar Evers College (MEC) has been awarded a Small Business Technology Transfer Research (STTR) grant from the United States Navy’s Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR). The Natrion-MEC team responded to NAVAIR’s funding opportunity N21B-T023: “High Specific Energy Lithium-Ion Battery with Carbon-Based Nanostructures” and were awarded $200,000 for their six-month project.
Natrion, in partnership with MEC, will be developing and demonstrating a novel carbon/lithium metal composite anode for next-generation high-energy-density lithium-ion batteries for aerospace applications. The anode serves as the component that stores electric charge inside of a battery. Lithium metal-based anodes hold great potential for lithium-ion batteries, as they can provide ten times the power capacity of conventional graphite anodes.
“Making lithium metal work has been a priority for us for a long time. We want to leverage it to vastly improve how quickly an electric vehicle battery can be charged and how long an electric vehicle can operate on a single charge. This STTR is a great opportunity for us to resolve one of the final obstacles that remain in the path of Li-metal anode battery commercialization for all forms of electric mobility applications,” said Dr. Duke Shih, Chief Technology Officer of Natrion.
Dr. Michele Vittadello, a Professor of Chemistry at MEC and Director of the M.S. Program in Nanoscience at the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center, will be leading the team collaborating with Natrion. “Our research group at Medgar Evers College has been working with Natrion for well over a year now on the development of solid-state sodium-ion batteries, and there will be a lot that we’ll be able to transfer to these ongoing efforts from what we learn with this new lithium-ion battery project for the Navy,” added Vittadello.
