UCSB to join major collaboration supporting battery innovation and commercialization

Thanks to a new nonprofit - the Electrochemistry Foundry (ECF) - and construction begun under its auspices, UC Santa Barbara is poised to join a group of collaborating partners in a new era of battery prototyping. The effort is aimed at bridging the gap between innovative technology and commercial availability, thus securing the technological foundations of the modern economy.

The public launch of ECF was announced on April 15, with the goal of accelerating the commercialization of advanced energy technologies in California's first shared-use battery pilot manufacturing line. A $28 million competitive award from the California Energy Commission (CEC) has enabled the organization to move forward with developing the facility, to be located in Hayward, California, on the eastern side of San Francisco Bay, bringing job opportunities to a designated disadvantaged community.

In addition to UCSB, the network of collaborating entities includes UC Berkeley, UC Riverside, the Volta Foundation, the Catalyst Innovation Group and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Additionally, ECF will onshore world-class manufacturing expertise from South Korea through dedicated operational support from Top Material, an industry leader in operating flexible Li-ion manufacturing lines.

"The support from the California Energy Commission will help to establish a state-of-the-art battery-component manufacturing pilot line at UCSB's recently established OASIS research facility, thus bolstering efforts to develop and scale-up of novel manufacturing processes while training the next-generation of battery engineers," said Professor Jeff Sakamoto, a battery expert in the Materials and Mechanical Engineering Departments at UCSB's Robert Mehrabian College of Engineering. Sakamoto is UCSB's lead on the effort.

ECF's mission calls for it to provide shared infrastructure and expertise required to address the current high-cost transition from laboratory research to industrial-scale production, considered the "missing link" in the American innovation ecosystem. With access to ECF's pilot line, a startup developing, say, a new battery cathode can produce the first fifty multi-layer pouch cells needed to show to investors, without building a $10 million facility of their own.

"I've seen too many brilliant breakthroughs stall out in the pilot-scale gap," said ECF CEO Brenna Teigler, whose background includes roles at Activate, Cyclotron Road and the U.S. Department of Energy. "Our vision is a world powered by electrochemistry, where the path from scientific discovery to societal impact is open to all innovators. The next great battery breakthrough - whether it comes from a startup or an established company - should not be stopped by the cost of infrastructure they can't justify building alone."

"The ECF will fill a great unmet need by bridging the gaps between cutting-edge battery innovation, commercialization and scale-up in California," said Sakamoto, adding that UCSB will contribute ceramic-electrolyte R & D to enable advanced electrochemical technologies such as solid-state batteries and membranes for energy-efficient lithium separation.

The centerpiece of ECF's operations is its 20,000-square-foot state-of-the-art facility, strategically located to leverage the Bay Area's hardware-engineering talent and support economic growth in. Scheduled for completion in late 2026, the facility sits in the middle of the highest concentration of electrochemistry startups, world-class academic institutions, national labs, startup accelerators and venture capitalists in the world. It features a comprehensive manufacturing line capable of producing at least ten thousand cells per year supporting both pouch and cylindrical formats.

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