The battery of the future

Lithium-ion batteries are currently the state of the art in battery technology, but they’re not perfect. They lose capacity with each charge cycle and take a relatively long time to recharge. An alternative, called supercapacitors, can be charged in seconds but can only store a small amount of energy.

A team of researchers from Empa and ETH Zurich has developed BTRY, a solid-state battery based on lithium metal that has some impressive advantages and could shake up the industry. According to the press release, it charges in just one minute, lasts about ten times as long as conventional lithium-ion batteries and is insensitive to temperature fluctuations. Another advantage of this technology is the more  environmentally-friendly manufacturing process than conventional batteries, as no toxic solvents are used.

The battery uses thin-film technology that was already known in the 1980s, but could only store a small amount of energy. The founders have succeeded in stacking the thin-film cells, which are only a few micrometres thick, into more powerful batteries. They’ve developed a process that uses high-precision vacuum coating and no toxic solvents. Production uses advanced, scalable technology already proven in semiconductor manufacturing to ensure efficiency and quality. This makes it the industry's first energy-dense solid-state battery manufactured using advanced semiconductor manufacturing processes.

The spin-off BTRY was founded in 2023 to bring the innovative technology to market. Thanks to a successful pre-seed round of CHF 900,000 in early 2024 and various awards, such as being a member of the Swiss National Startup Team 2024 in the cleantech sector and part of the European Space Agency's Business Incubator programme, the young company is making good progress. The aim is to have a pre-commercial production line in place by 2025 to enable scaling and commercialisation.

Thanks to its temperature stability, long life, fast charging times and compact size, the new technology could be used in IoT devices, the space sector and consumer electronics.