The US Department of Energy (DOE) is awarding $25 million to projects to advance materials, processes, machines, and equipment for domestic manufacturing of next-generation batteries. These projects will advance platform technologies upon which battery manufacturing capabilities can be built, enabling flexible, scalable, and highly controllable battery manufacturing processes.

Managed by DOE’s Advanced Materials and Manufacturing Technologies Office (AMMTO), the next-generation batteries projects fall under two topic areas:

Platforms for Next-Generation Battery Manufacturing. Subtopic 1 focuses on advanced processes and/or high-performance processing machines for low cost, large-scale, sustainable, commercial manufacture of sodium-ion batteries. 

• AM Batteries, Inc. (Billerica, Massachusetts): $2.8 million

• Argonne National Laboratory (Lemont, Illinois): $1.5 million

• Clean Republic SODO LLC d/b/a Dakota Lithium Materials (Seattle, Washington): $2 million

Subtopic 2 focuses on design and manufacturing of flow battery membranes, as well as system design and manufacturing for scale-up of flow battery production and cost-effective integration of flow battery systems. 

• Quino Energy, Inc. (San Leandro California): $2.6 million

• Arkema, Inc. (King of Prussia, Pennsylvania): $2.1 million

• University of Akron (Akron, Ohio): $1.6 million

Subtopic 3 focuses on scalable manufacturing processes and equipment for nanolayered films.

• University of Maryland (College Park, Maryland): $2.6 million

• Illinois Institute of Technology / Spraying System Co. (Chicago, Illinois / Glendale Heights, Illinois): $2.6 million

Smart Manufacturing Platforms for Battery Production. This topic emphasizes development of broadly applicable smart manufacturing platforms that can be leveraged to improve the production of a variety of battery technologies.

• Charge CCCV (Vestal, New York): $2.6 million

• American Lithium Energy Corp. (Carlsbad, California): $2.6 million

• Titan Advanced Energy Solutions (Salem, Massachusetts): $2.6 million