The Lithium Ion Battery (LIB) market is going through a period of significant innovation and reinvention, with new applications being sought in electric mobility and energy storage.
Unfortunately, there are three attributes weighing on the widespread adoption of LIB technology in wider markets: slow charge rates, limited battery lifecycle and safety and transportation restrictions.
UltraCharge’s technology addresses these three concerns, heralding a new era in the LIB market.
Smartphones can be charged in under six minutes (compared to the current 60 minutes) and electric cars would be able to increase their range dramatically with just 15 minutes of charging, thanks to UltraCharge’s nanotechnology advancements.
The company’s breakthrough in the LIB market has received accolades from Rachid Yazami, co-inventor oftoday’s generation of LIBs, hailing UltraCharge’s improvements as “the next big thing”.
In addition to rapid charging time, UltraCharge’s technology fixes the addresses the issues of limited lifecycle and safety issues.
“Using patented technology, the anode in UltraCharge batteries is titanium dioxide not graphite, avoiding thermal runaway or overheating which is the main cause of fire in traditional energy storage systems,” UltraCharge chief executive Kobi Ben-Shabat said.
“Our technology also extends the lifetime of LIBs. UltraCharge batteries can endure between 10,000 to 15,000 charging cycles – that’s 20 times more than today’s batteries.”
“Easy integration is also very important for our solution. Our technology allows for battery manufacturers to easily integrate our nanotube gel into their production processes. Finally, we use low-cost raw materials in our patented production process, making our approach cost-efficient as well,” Ben-Shabat said.
Titanium dioxide nanotube gel is key to UltraCharge’s success. The metal is cheap, safe and plentiful – even being used as a food additive and as a key ingredient in sunscreen.
However, the issue for UltraCharge was titanium dioxide occurring naturally in a spherical shape, which isn’t ideal for the required application.
UltraCharge has been able to license a revolutionary technology which converts the spherical titanium dioxide into long, micronized nanotubes – perfect for speeding up the reactions taking place in an UltraCharge battery and achieving the aforementioned positive results.
There are competitors in this space, but as it stands UltraCharge is leading the field. Toshiba SCiB, Tesla Supercharger, OPPO VOOC and Qualcomm QC are have similar solutions, however UltraCharge takes the cake when considering charging time, lifetime and energy density results.
Headquartered in Israel, UltraCharge is currently in the process of a reverse takeover of Lithex Resources Ltd, a former lithium minerals exploration company listed on the Australian Securities Exchange.
The company has recently completed a fully-subscribed initial public offering, which offered 70 million shares at 5 cents per share, generating $3.5 million for ongoing activities.
The lion’s share of the funds ($2.77 million) will be used for research, development and manufacturing.
In the next two to five months, UltraCharge will be aiming to demonstrate its unique LIB product is comparable to current market standards, whilst simultaneously looking for a potential collaboration with a major energy company or car manufacturer.
Within six to nine months, UltraCharge plans to have demonstrated that its patented product can fit in with existing industry standard assembly lines.