MEC + Natrion Joint Proposal Awarded Small Business Technology Transfer Research Grant from United States Navy
Natrion, a leader in the research and development of next-generation battery technologies, announced that a joint proposal that the company prepared in partnership with Medgar Evers College has been awarded a Small Business Technology Transfer Research (STTR) grant from the United States Navy’s Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR). The Natrion-MEC team responded to NAVAIR’s funding opportunity N21B-T023: “High Specific Energy Lithium-Ion Battery with Carbon-Based Nanostructures” and were awarded $200,000 for their six-month project.
Natrion, in partnership with MEC, will be developing and demonstrating a novel carbon/lithium metal composite anode for next-generation high-energy-density lithium-ion batteries for aerospace applications. The anode serves as the component that stores electric charge inside of a battery. Lithium metal-based anodes hold great potential for lithium-ion batteries, as they can provide ten times the power capacity of conventional graphite anodes.
“Making lithium metal work has been a priority for us for a long time. We want to leverage it to vastly improve how quickly an electric vehicle battery can be charged and how long an electric vehicle can operate on a single charge. This STTR is a great opportunity for us to resolve one of the final obstacles that remain in the path of Li-metal anode battery commercialization for all forms of electric mobility applications,” said Dr. Duke Shih, chief technology officer of Natrion.
Dr. Michele Vittadello, a professor of Chemistry at MEC and director of the MS program in Nanoscience at the CUNY’s Graduate Center, will be leading the team collaborating with Natrion. “Our research group at Medgar Evers College has been working with Natrion for well over a year now on the development of solid-state sodium-ion batteries, and there will be a lot that we’ll be able to transfer to these ongoing efforts from what we learn with this new lithium-ion battery project for the Navy,” added Vittadello.
About Natrion
Natrion is a battery research and development startup based in Binghamton, New York. It was started out of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2018 by founders Alex Kosyakov and Tom Rouffiac, and is currently based in the New York State-sponsored Southern Tier Clean Energy Incubator. The company prides itself on its unique application-driven research approach and expertise in composite material systems. For more information, visit www.natrion.co.
About Medgar Evers College
Located in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, Medgar Evers College offers both associate and baccalaureate degrees. A four-year college within the City University of New York (CUNY) system, Medgar Evers College was established in 1970 with a mandate to meet the educational and social needs of the Central Brooklyn community. In its commitment to providing students with a sound academic foundation as well as an opportunity for personal development, Medgar Evers College offers high-quality, professional, career-oriented degree programs within the context of a liberal arts education. Medgar Evers College is part of NASA’s Space Grant Project as well as the Thurgood Marshall College Fund as a predominantly black institution. For more information, visit www.mec.cuny.edu.
