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‘Safe Core’ Battery Technology Draws Qualcomm Investment

CEO: Jenna King

Revenue: Pre-revenue

No. of local employees: Undisclosed. A representative said Amionx and sister company American Lithium Energy have fewer than 50 employees

Investors: Jiang Fan, Jenna King, Rob Albert, Steve Altman, Qualcomm Inc.

Headquarters: Carlsbad

Year founded: 2016

What makes the company innovative: Amionx claims to have a proprietary technology that will prevent batteries from catching fire or exploding

One of the biggest engineering puzzles of the decade is how to make peace with a new generation of batteries. Lithium-ion batteries are wonderful — they are powerful, capable and able to last a long time between charges — but they can also be prone to fire or explosion.

Carlsbad-based Amionx says it has hit on a way to make lithium-ion batteries safer. In fact, it would work for any other type of battery, including solid state batteries, company officials say.

Now Qualcomm Inc. — a San Diego company with deep pockets and a big interest in making better, longer-lasting mobile devices — has put money behind Amionx. The amount of the investment, announced June 20, was not disclosed.

Amionx says it has created a “circuit breaker” that can shut down a battery as soon as conditions start to get dangerous. Those conditions include overcharging or reaching too high a temperature.

The circuit breaker analogy is probably not the best analogy, one company representative said, because a person can reset a circuit breaker in a building and proceed with life as normal. A battery with Amionx’s “Safe Core” technology would be ruined after Amionx’s circuit breaker popped. Then again, the loss of a battery is better than the risk of injury (or worse) because of a fire or explosion.

In a statement, Amionx said Safe Core is focused on safety “from the core of the battery outward.”

Good in Emergencies

Its technology works even when other safety measures fail or are not activated.

Amionx was created in 2016 to commercialize technology from a sister company, defense contractor American Lithium Energy Corp. ALE created more capable, safer batteries using grants from the U.S. Department of Energy and DOE’s advanced projects lab. ALE has delivered products using Safe Core technology to the military.

Batteries frequently come in tens, hundreds or even thousands of cells. A key problem that engineers face is called thermal runaway, when a single cell short-circuits, catches fire and then affects neighboring cells; this can spread through the entire collection of cells. ALE says its military batteries stop thermal runaway caused by impact, overcharge or heat. Company officials can show off one of its military batteries that survived multiple hits from an AK-47 assault rifle without failing.

The IP

Jiang Fan — who is CEO of American Lithium Energy — is chief technology officer of Amionx. Fan holds a doctorate in chemistry from Arizona State University. Jenna King serves as Amionx’s chief executive.

The businesses have two patents and four more are pending. But a lot of Amionx’s technology is wrapped up in trade secrets.

How does Safe Core shut the battery down when it gets to the brink of a problem? Amionx won’t say exactly. Bill Davidson, who was been fielding media inquiries about the company, would only say that it creates a gap that cuts the flow of electricity at a critical moment.

The Qualcomm Playbook

As part of the Qualcomm investment, Derek Aberle, president of Qualcomm, will join Amionx’s board.

Taking a page from Qualcomm’s playbook, Amionx plans to license its technology to battery makers. Existing battery factories wanting to put Safe Core into their products will not incur additional capital costs, the business partners said. They also described the bill of materials costs for adding Safe Core to a battery as “minimal.”

Qualcomm described its funding, announced June 20, as a strategic investment. The investment is not typical of the tech giant as it came from its licensing arm, not the Qualcomm Ventures arm. Company officials said the investment did not value Amionx as a startup, as the business is spinning out of American Lithium Energy, which was founded in 2006 and has an established factory.

It’s not technology fresh from the lab, said King. “This technology is already in battery cells and ready to be brought to [the commercial] market.”

The lithium-ion battery market is worth an estimated $35 billion annually and is expected to grow rapidly.

King said Amionx is talking to battery manufacturers and its technology could be in a product within six months of signing a deal. “Hopefully it will be in every battery out there — that’s where we’d like to see it,” she said.

Aberle, in a prepared statement, said Safe Core can open new opportunities for lithium-ion batteries in situations and uses where there have been safety concerns.

Safe Core could be the thing that gives electric vehicle makers more freedom in designing and placing their battery enclosures. Batteries might go into doors rather than a steel casing low to the ground, King said.

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