A recent article in Nature suggests that Ambri has switched to a lithium-antimony-lead liquid-metal battery materials system for its grid-scale energy storage technology. The company did not confirm the new material.
Ambri is the battery firm that is based on the research of Donald Sadoway, MIT professor of materials chemistry, and inspired by the economies of scale facilitated by modern electrometallurgy and the aluminum smelter.
The big-battery startup has raised more than $50 million in venture capital from investors KLP Enterprises, the family office of Karen Pritzker and Michael Vlock, Building Insurance Bern, Khosla Ventures, Bill Gates and French energy giant Total, along with plenty of MIT and government grant money.
The three battery layers in the Ambri device are self-segregating, cheap to manufacture, and earth-abundant, according to the firm. The materials used in the original design were magnesium and antimony separated by a salt — but “we needed higher voltage and lower temperature,” said Ambri’s CTO, David Bradwell, in a recent presentation, and so the firm developed a new, undisclosed chemistry with the help of ARPA-E funding.
—
Read the full article at GreenTechMedia