Europe has taken some big swings in the battery industry in recent years and has made a couple of high-profile misses. Both Sweden's Northvolt, external and Norway's Morrow, external filed for bankruptcy and there are fears in Europe that the continent has missed another technology shift. With more transport and industry switching from fossil fuels to electricity, batteries are likely to be a growth business.
But the length of time required to bring new products to market, coupled with brutal competition, especially from China, means taking a substantial risk. Could the answer lie at an almost unimaginably small scale? An increasing number of investors and researchers think so.
A single nanometre is one-billionth of a metre, but it's at that level that some of the most consequential work is being done. "If you can make this work, it touches so many industries [but] it's a risky business," says Christian Rood, chief executive of Dutch tech firm LeydenJar. Named after a 18th century precursor to electric cells, LeydenJar uses a technique known as plasma deposition to make a lighter, more efficient anode – an essential component of all batteries.
Silicon is a highly effective and cheap material to use in anodes, but pure silicon expands and contracts as the battery operates and is recharged, which causes it to crack. However, using plasma deposition, LeydenJar can - layer by tiny layer - make an ultra-thin pure silicon foil which resists cracking, allowing a significant increase in battery life, charging speed, and energy density (up to 50%, according to LeydenJar). "Where normally a pure silicon anode would fall apart, [this] remains stable, so it was a very wonderful invention," says Rood.
"We address the bottleneck in the battery." Commercial-scale production will start at the end of 2026, but it has taken 10 years to get to this point – the very definition of the time and investment required for so-called Deep Tech innovations. It's no coincidence that LeydenJar's factory is in the Dutch city of Eindhoven - home to ASML and other important players in the computer chip industry. "A lot of people talk theoretically about ecosystems; I can tell you this is one of our sources of competitive advantage," Rood says.
"It's really the crossover from semiconductors to batteries that makes us different - once you've demonstrated the principle in the lab, industrialization requires you to work with the semiconductor technology and suppliers. "That means a lot of risk, but also a lot of opportunity in terms of patenting, in terms of securing your whole intellectual property. And that's much more difficult to do in the US or in China." Across the Netherlands and Europe more widely there are multiple smaller Deep Tech start-ups looking to develop nanotechnology in the battery market.
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