U.S. Department of Energy Awards Eight Projects to Strengthen Microbattery Designs, Manufacturing Practices
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced awards for eight new designs for microbatteries, through its Microbattery Design Prize. This prize aims to accelerate the commercialization of these innovative microbattery designs, along with their integration into the existing technologies needed for clean energy manufacturing. In addition to automatically advancing to phase two of this prize, each selected project will receive an award consisting of $75,000 in a cash prize along with performance and safety testing services with DOE National Laboratories.
Currently, the microbattery market is unable to leverage many of the existing manufacturing processes of the larger battery supply chain ecosystem, due to the requirements associated with their small size. This presents a major barrier to the development and commercialization of new microbattery chemistries and designs, along with an opportunity to increase domestic production and secure supply chains.