the brittle nature of ceramics—which
leads to dendrite-friendly cracks—poses
additional manufacturing difficulties
that companies like Solid Power have
had to solve.
The next fundamental hurdle is
rechargeability, says Neil Dasgupta,
Ph.D., a materials science and engi-
neering professor at the University of
Michigan who studies solid-state lith-
ium-metal batteries with Sakamoto.
Lithium-ion batteries meet an industry
standard of charging more than 1,000
times before they significantly degrade,
he says. “If you’re plugging your phone
in five times a week for four years, you’ve
already charged it over a thousand times.”
Solid Power won’t share how many cycles
its current prototypes can reach, but Will
McKenna, the company’s communica-
tions director, says they’re still pushing
to surpass the 1,000-cycle bar.
Much of the emerging research on lith-
ium-metal batteries focuses on how many
charge cycles research batteries can sus-
tain. A team at Harvard University made▲
Sakamoto
and his team
created a
battery with
double the
output of
lithium ion.
▶
Electrode
coating of a
foil that will
be dried, cut,
and stacked
into cells at
Sakamoto’s
lab.46 January/February 2022 PHOTOGRAPHY BY LYNDON FRENCH