Meet Dr. Moshiel Biton, Founder Of Addionics

Tell Us About The Business

Addionics is creating the next generation of energy storage through its unique focus on battery physics. The company’s chemistry-agnostic solution enhances the capacity, power, safety, charging time, lifetime and the cost of batteries, while enabling reduction in the size and weight of the battery. With performance metrics such as 2x higher accessible capacity, 50% less charging time, 150% longer lifetime, Addionics can improve any kind of battery chemistry in the market, existing or emerging. This is critical for unlocking the potential of next-generation battery chemistries such as solid state and silicone, which will accelerate electrification and a decarbonised future.

Addionics has redesigned traditional battery architecture using a cost effective and scalable metal fabrication manufacturing process. The company’s Smart 3D Electrodes address the fundamental limitations that affect degradation in standard batteries while enabling higher energy density. The design supports greater loading of active material, minimises internal resistance, and improves mechanical longevity and thermal stability.

The manufacturing process and design is augmented by AI-based optimisation to better predict and determine the best structure for any given application. To further aid in accelerating the manufacturing processes of battery technology, this drop-in solution can be fully integrated into pre-existing assembly lines, saving manufacturers time and money. This revolutionary approach creates a significant step-change in the performance of all key battery characteristics, simultaneously, at a cheaper cost of ownership.

Addionics’ mission is to revolutionise the energy storage industry by building the best battery architecture in the market to unlock the full potential of energy storage for a range of applications including electric vehicles, aviation and defence, consumer electronics, medical devices and renewables.

How Did It Come About?

7 years ago, while working on my Ph.D. in material engineering at Imperial College London, Samsung had a huge problem. Their popular Galaxy Note 7 phones were randomly catching fire. My colleagues and I started exploring why the phone’s battery was combusting. We were the first team in the world to investigate the issue in real-time, and we ended up making a surprising discovery that we thought could revolutionize the way we design batteries.

The battery issues in the Note 7 were due to known chemical phenomena of metal dendrites, which are metal spikes that can grow inside batteries and puncture holes from the inside. As a result, the batteries explode, which is what was leading the phones to catch fire. In doing the research, I began to realize that the unique structure of the dendrites and how they grow inside the battery can actually be used to our benefit.

It may have been a crazy idea at the time, but given how the industry has only improved battery performance incrementally over the last few decades, I felt very motivated to pursue this.
It may have been the first time that my professor didn’t immediately laugh at one of my crazy ideas. As an Israeli, I have many of them.

In academia, we’re good at exploring but not necessarily inventing. We applied for a grant anyway.
A few weeks later I got a call: “You just won a 60,000 Euro prize to develop this technology!” But when we went to the bank to deposit the money, we were told we’d have to start a company.
And that’s how Addionics was born.

Today, Addionics is developing new approaches to battery design that we think will transform the industry. While most efforts to improve batteries focus on chemistry, we focus on physics. This approach means we can improve any kind of battery chemistry on the market, existing or emerging.

What Challenges Have You Faced?

Fortunately, now is a great time to develop battery technologies because of the electrification revolution and the fact that big companies understand that climate change is real and that something must be done about it. The world needs to create new ways to produce and consume energy. The automotive industry is leading the revolution. Energy storage, renewable energy and countries like the USA, EU, etc are also a big part of the transformation.

Everyone is trying to reduce carbon emissions and create a better future for us all. Still, there are many challenges in developing new technology that might transform the whole battery industry – the time it takes to develop, demonstration of scalability, cost-effectiveness, protecting your IP, and more. We are lucky to have a great team and wonderful investors to support us.

How Did You Respond During Covid?

We were just raising our seed round when COVID started spreading. It was a huge challenge because we could not fly anywhere to meet investors or companies that might be interested to partner with us. Not only that, but a lot of companies stopped their investment vehicles as there was a lot of unclarity in the market. Luckily, we managed to raise more than expected thanks to a 2.3 Million Euro non-dilutive grant from the EU Horizon2020.

What Are Your Plans For Growth?

Right now we are developing our production capabilities and working on our Ver.4 machine, which will produce continuous smart 3D electrodes to integrate our solution into any battery assembly line as a drop-in solution. At the same time, we have a few projects with global leaders in the automotive and consumer electronics industry. Together, we are working on smart 3D electrode based batteries, with several existing battery chemistries (NMC622, NMC811, LFP) and also emerging chemistries (Silicon anode, Solid-State) in order to create the next generation of batteries and revolutionise energy storage – all this being done to enable a better future for the planet.