Leydenjar’s silicon anode enters production realm

Asked to look back at 3.5 years of developing a new anode recipe for lithium-ion batteries, Christian Rood of Leydenjar prefers to answer what outsiders have told him. “Experts and people from the battery industry say we should be happy with the progress we’ve made. Personally, I would have liked to have seen a little more. I guess I’m not easily satisfied,” the company co-founder admits. In any case, it’s fair to say: so far, so good.

Leydenjar, named after the battery’s predecessor, thanks its existence to technology that was developed many years ago at solar cell research institute ECN. Researcher Wim Soppe theorized that nano-texturing would improve the performance of thin-film silicon solar cells. He then successfully developed a plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) process to create a layer of silicon nano-pillars on a substrate. Unfortunately, they didn’t perform as well as hoped.