Canada's Li-Metal Corp. is on the cusp of an EV battery breakthrough

A Canadian company is leapfrogging current lithium-ion chemistries to focus on the “Holy Grail” of battery technology.

Markham, Ont.-based Li-Metal Corp. has begun producing high-performance anodes that could cut battery weight by half while turning vehicle range into an afterthought, said Dean Frankel, the company’s chief commercial officer.

“Lithium metal is widely considered to be the Holy Grail of batteries,” he said. “Unless we invent new elements, it really is as good as it gets for the negative half of the battery.”

A negative anode and positive cathode, combined with a separator and electrolyte, form the basis of a battery cell. In most EV batteries today, cathodes are a mix of lithium, nickel, manganese and cobalt. Anodes are composed of graphite, making a lithium metal anode a next-generation novelty.

Reworking the negative side of the battery could be transformative, Frankel said. Li-Metal’s anodes could either reduce battery weights up to 50 per cent without sacrificing EV range, or create battery packs that offer dramatically improved range without increasing size.

“We increase the energy by about 100 per cent,” he said. “At the pack level, instead of getting 180 kilowatt-hours per kilogram, you’re getting over 300. That’s a huge amount of weight savings in the vehicle. It means that the vehicle can go farther with the same unit of energy.”

COST, PRODUCTION BARRIERS

Li-Metal is not alone in seeing the battery potential in lithium metal. To date, however, high costs and production obstacles have kept the material at the research level.

It was in addressing the cost and challenges of isolating the alkali metal that Li-Metal got its start.

The material-technology company’s pilot plant just north of Toronto uses lithium carbonate to produce lithium metal up to 30 per cent more cheaply, as well as more cleanly, than the conventional process, Frankel said. Most current lithium metal production takes place in China, he said, and relies on rarer lithium chloride, which produces toxic chlorine gas as a byproduct.

Li-Metal’s original aim was direct sales of lithium metal. But as the company built out its production, it also developed a new way to make thin, customizable battery anodes.

Unlike the traditional method of extruding lithium metal into a sheet and rolling it to a specific thickness, “We’re taking that lithium metal and vaporizing it onto a substrate, almost like a spray paint,” Frankel said.

“We are able to start with nothing and perfectly tailor the thickness to what lithium content our customers want . . .”

Li-Metal recently opened a small-scale anode production plant in Rochester, N.Y., and began shipping samples to prospective customers. Ultimately, Frankel said, EV anodes will likely prove to be a far larger market opportunity for Li-Metal than the outright sales of lithium metal it had originally intended.

SUPPLY STRAINS

Obstacles remain, mainly in scaling up the process.

“We have something that works (and) we’re delivering it to customers. We’re tweaking it and we have plans next year to go to the first true commercialization phase, where basically thereafter, growth just looks like printing and repeating,” Frankel said.

But along with the usual growing pains, material costs could prove problematic.

Although lithium metal has “significant potential” for anodes, lithium supplies are already tight and prices are high because of the use of lithium in cathodes, said Yayoi Sekine, head of energy storage at data company BloombergNEF. Using the valuable metal for anodes could further strain supplies. BloombergNEF anticipates the scale-up period will last at least a decade.

“There’s high potential because, essentially, you increase efficiency and energy density by quite a lot,” Sekine said. “But that’s probably in the latter half of the decade or in the early 2030s.”

For its part, Li-Metal aims to have its anodes in EV battery packs as early as the middle of this decade. It is working to make its anodes “the exact same cost per unit of energy as the existing lithium-ion graphite anodes,” Frankel said.

POWERED BY PARTNERSHIPS

But the anode is also only one piece of the puzzle. While Li-Metal has been tweaking its production process, it has also been lining up partnerships with battery producers that will integrate its high-performance anodes into EV batteries.

Earlier this year, Li-Metal signed a joint development agreement with Blue Solutions, a subsidiary of France’s Bolloré Group that is working on solid-state lithium metal batteries. Blue Solutions, which has a manufacturing and research operation in Quebec, aims to have its batteries in EVs by 2026.

The joint initiative got an added boost in April when Next Generation Manufacturing Canada (NGen), the industry group heading Ottawa’s manufacturing supercluster program, awarded Li-Metal and Blue Solutions a $1.9-million grant.

Li-Metal’s anodes can also be used in batteries more closely resembling the familiar lithium-ion chemistries used today, though they require new types of liquid electrolyte.

The company is currently shipping sample products to several automotive customers. It anticipates working primarily as a Tier 2 auto supplier, providing battery manufacturers anodes to integrate into battery cells. Collaborating with automakers directly involved in battery development is possible as well, Frankel said.