Barker's Battery Blog: Sodium-ion Batteries: Interest Grows

Tuesday, 8 December 2009

Sodium-ion Batteries: Interest Grows

Following on from my post last month regarding the upsurge of interest in Sodium-ion technology, 44 Tech, a start-up company based in Pittsburgh, PA, will receive $5 million from the U.S. Department of Energy, as part of the 2009 Recovery Act, to develop aqueous sodium-ion batteries. These cells will differ from the non-aqueous counterparts described by me in an earlier post, in that they will operate at much lower voltage (due to the limited voltage stability window of the electrolyte). On the positive side, if these systems can be demonstrated successfully, they may prove extremely safe and inexpensive.

The full story may be found here:

Sodium-ion Cells for Cheap Energy Storage

Jerry

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Barker's Battery Blog

Jerry Barker is currently co-founder and Chief Scientist of Faradion Limited, a UK-based start-up company specializing in next generation Na-ion battery technology. The company has state-of-the-art R&D labs and prototype manufacturing facilities in the UK. Check out the company website here:

http://www.faradion.co.uk/

In May 2019, Jerry was appointed Honorary Professor within the School of Chemistry at the University of St. Andrews.

Jerry Barker also runs an independent technology consultant, specializing in the energy storage sector. He may be contacted here:

jerrybarker@gmail.com

Jerry has worked in the UK, Denmark and the US and has managed materials research labs in Europe and North America. He is currently located in the UK where he has consulted for, and advised a number of battery R&D companies, varying in size from small university startup to global multinational. He has also consulted and advised on solar photovoltaics (PV) where he is widely regarded as a world expert on the electrodeposition of thin film semiconductors for PV and other applications. In his early career Jerry spent time at UCSB where he collaborated with the Nobel prize winners Alan Heeger and Hideki Shirakawa on alkali metal doped polyacetylene.

Jerry has published extensively in the energy storage area (h-index = 56, total number of citations >11,000) and is a named inventor on more than 120 issued US patents. He has appeared as a patent litigation expert witness in Europe and in North America. He has also acted as the due diligence technical expert for a number of VC-backed startup companies. Additional information on Jerry's background may be found at the website:

http://www.jerrybarker.co.uk/

Jerry currently acts as an Expert Panel member for the UK's Faraday Institution and as a Board Member of the UK LiBATT consortium.

The articles and comments posted on this blog will simply be Jerry's own personal opinions. Much of the emphasis will be placed on the recent news stories involving Energy Storage Systems - especially Lithium metal anode, Lithium-ion and Sodium-ion Batteries - and Thin-film Photovoltaics.

Please feel free to add useful comments and suggestions - these will help to keep the discussions alive. I will try to respond to these postings as they are made.

Jerry