MCEC recently had the opportunity to visit Ion Storage Systems (ION) at their Beltsville, MD location.
ION boasts the only solid-state electrolyte technology that has achieved ARPA-E and DOE VTO Fast-Charge goals for Li-cycling current density at room temperature and with no applied pressure. This is enabled by their proprietary ceramic bilayer design which includes a dense separator layer and a porous anode layer. The team consists of experienced battery industry professionals that have redesigned the battery – making it safer, stronger, and adaptable.
Ion’s plans are ambitious and have garnered support from a diversity of partners – MEII, Toyota Ventures, and Lockheed Martin, to name a few. ION also has future partnerships in the works that will help scale the battery material supply chain and increase the quality and precision of their battery assembly for mass production. Future plans include providing this new technology through a variety of markets: the military, consumer goods, medical products, and electric vehicles.
On the tour, attendees were able to take a peek at the current facility and hear from the engineers and technicians themselves about the production process. Each patented ceramic part that that goes into the battery has gone through multiple quality checks, yielding safe and nonflammable solid-state electrolyte parts.
The company’s current priorities surround preparing the production process for large scale demands while maintaining the quality of each part.