Project description
Today's Li-ion batteries face several limitations: slow charging, limited lifetime and safety issues, with additional social and environmental negative impacts due to their need for lithium and cobalt. Swistor is developing a novel energy storage solution to complement or replace rechargeable batteries, based on a carbon nanotube (CNT) supercapacitor. In contrast to batteries and most hybrid supercapacitors, our technology is environmentally friendly, exhibits fast charging (10 to 100x faster than traditional batteries), extended service life and a wide range of operating temperatures without security problems. In addition, due to the CNT high surface area combined with a smart device design and nanostructuring, our device can store very high energy levels, with all the added advantages of supercapacitors. In addition to the technical performances that go beyond the state of the art, the proposed technology can be scaled up using cleanroom manufacturing techniques, so that both requirements of IoT nodes and handheld devices can be addressed, with demonstrated commercial value and large economic impact.
Status/Results
In the framework of Innobooster, we optimized our scalable fabrication processes, enabling us to move towards product industrialization and have a competitive product on the energy storage market in the next 5 years. On the technical side, we have optimized our processes to match the industrial requirements and standard and we obtained a lab proof-of-concept validating our energy storage solution and established the specifications for our product. On the business side, we developed our go-to-market strategy and our understanding of the market trends. Based on the feedback received from industrial players on our technology, we refined our market entry strategy and identified potential candidates for partnerships towards pilot projects for product industrialization and understood the industrial value chain in the targeted markets.
We received the support of the Swiss Federal Office of Energy (SFOE) for the prototype development, in a Pilot and Demonstrator project, and they have also joined our Board of Advisors. We are currently preparing to raise a seed investment round.
Links
Persons involved in the project
Swistor is hosted in Nanolab EPFL
Clara Moldovan, project leader and founder
Prof. Adrian Ionescu, director host lab
Victoria Manzi, R&D project leader
Justyna Piwek, R&D scientist
Hung-Wei Li, research assistant
Last update to this project presentation 18.03.2024