The Solid State EV Battery Race Heats Up

The article discusses the advancing race to commercialize solid-state electric vehicle (EV) batteries, highlighting a new partnership between Corning Incorporated, a long-established materials company, and QuantumScape, a California-based startup. QuantumScape specializes in solid-state lithium-metal batteries, which replace the polymer separator in conventional lithium-ion batteries with a solid-state separator, enabling the use of a lithium-metal anode instead of carbon or silicon. This technology promises higher energy density but has faced significant development challenges. The collaboration aims to develop a manufacturing system for QuantumScape’s ceramic separator to enable high-volume production for commercial applications. Corning brings its 170 years of materials science expertise and a novel manufacturing process called Ribbon Ceramics, which fabricates ultra-thin materials using a roll-to-roll method. Corning is focusing on lithium garnet, a material capable of withstanding lithium metal anodes without degrading, potentially allowing batteries to exceed current energy storage capacities by over 50%. However, this technology is still in