and the US is the world’s second largest producer. Sulfur is also a byproduct of oil and gas production.
Conamix was founded in 2014 and has only recently emerged from stealth mode. Its work builds on innovations developed at Cornell, Stanford, University of Waterloo, Berkeley Lab, and other global research institutions. Conamix closed a Series B round of funding and also secured an $8.6 million contract from the federal Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity.
I spoke with Charlotte Hamilton recently on the progress so far on the journey to get lithium sulfur batteries into cars and on the roads.The EV battery industry is facing a supply crunch and a first time ever recent increase in the cost of high energy EV batteries at the cell level due to supply pressure on cobalt and high purity nickel.
We’re particularly focused on making cobalt- and nickel-free systems to relieve some of the supply chain bottlenecks that are currently facing long range lithium-ion cells for the EV market. All of our materials are designed to be drop-in materials that can be slurry coated onto cathodes with existing manufacturing methods.
Conamix uses a stack of multifunctional materials to address the issues that had stalled lithium sulfur tech. The Scanning Electron Microscope image at the top of the page illustrates some of these materials. Conamix incorporates “Meta particles” with gradient structures to balance the transport of ions and electrons to enable improved power capability, energy density.