Silatronix, a University of Wisconsin-Madison startup that has invented a safer electrolyte for the lithium-ion batteries used in phones, laptops and tablets, says its formulation has survived several years of evaluation and is now moving into pilot production at a major Japanese battery manufacturer.
The company cannot be identified, but it is known around the world, says Silatronix co-founder Robert Hamers, a professor of chemistry at UW-Madison.
A lithium electrolyte is the heart of the market’s lightest, most powerful batteries. But lithium batteries occasionally rupture and burn or explode.
The idea for the original Silatronix invention, a safer electrolyte, was hatched in one of those chance meetings beloved among advocates of scientific innovation. Hamers says Robert West, a chemistry colleague, “was literally walking down the hall, and he asked me, ‘Do you have anybody who can do electrochemical measurements?’ I told him we measure the current-voltage relationships at solid-liquid interfaces all the time, and he started talking about a new electrolyte for a lithium ion battery he was developing.”
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