Prieto Battery is the first startup produced by the business arm of Colorado State’s new Clean Energy Supercluster, called Cenergy. The university formed Cenergy in March 2008 to more quickly move clean-energy innovations from research laboratories into the commercial marketplace.
The technology was originally conceived by Amy Prieto, an assistant chemistry professor in Colorado State’s College of Natural Sciences. Prieto Battery aims to produce lithium ion batteries based on tiny or nanostructured materials on a mass scale.
Prieto expects to demonstrate the first prototype of her battery by early next year. Bohemian Asset Management in Fort Collins – a privately held division of the Bohemian Cos. – has supplied the first round of funding for the new company.
“The automobile (electric vehicles) and clean energy sectors (wind power, solar energy) are hamstrung by expensive, slow charging batteries that exhibit low-power densities,” said Prieto, who is chief scientific officer for the company. “Resolving these issues will create explosive growth and resolve major obstacles to these markets.”
“Battery systems are the single most important component when it comes to reducing the cost of PHEVs and EVs,” said L.G. Chavez, president and CEO of The Burt Automotive Network in Denver. “We are routinely asked by our fleet customers when new battery technology will be available. Dr. Prieto’s battery could not only help our industry take a significant step forward but also change the world as we know it.”
How it works: Using a process called electrodeposition, Prieto deposits or grows nanowires that make up the first key piece of the battery, the anode. She again uses electrodeposition to coat these tiny structures with polymers – organic materials – that conduct lithium ions but that keep the anode and the cathode electrically separated. The separation is important for keeping the battery from shorting. The cathode material is added, and the result is a three-dimensional battery. The nanowires that make up the anode cover a surface area that is 10,000 times greater than a traditional battery. By comparison, roughly 1,000 nanowires could fit in the width of a human hair.
This high number of three-dimensional wires creates a much larger surface area than any other current battery. The electrodeposition manufacturing method is fast and inexpensive, allowing the technology to be scaled up to create batteries that can be used for everything from pacemakers to automobiles.
The automotive market alone, by 2013, is expected to surpass 1 million cars with 18 kilowatt hours of batteries each for a projected market of $4 billion.
“We believe Prieto Battery has created a process that will transform the electric/hybrid vehicle marketplace. Not only will it create a much more powerful battery that can be charged in minutes rather than hours, but it can be manufactured at half the price of current battery technologies, thus opening the market to a much broader group of consumers,” said Tim Reeser, Cenergy chief operating officer and CEO of Prieto Battery. “And with partners such as Bohemian, Colorado State professors continue to make a global impact on our planet while creating primary jobs in Northern Colorado.”
CSU’s technology transfer office applied for a patent that encompasses all Prieto Battery technology in February. The patent has been exclusively licensed to Prieto Battery.
Prieto joined Colorado State in 2005. She completed her post-doctoral research at Harvard University and received her doctoral degree from the University of California-Berkeley.
About the Clean Energy Supercluster
Colorado State’s Clean Energy Supercluster is an alliance of academic researchers, economists and business experts organized to address global challenges, encourage collaboration and bridge the vastly different worlds of business and academia. The Supercluster combines an academic component and a business component, which allows the public to reap benefits from the university’s research and acceleration of this research-to-market model.
Cenergy is the business component of the Clean Energy Supercluster. Professor Bryan Willson in mechanical engineering serves as the director of the Clean Energy Supercluster and chief scientific officer of Cenergy, overseeing the clean energy research activities of more than 100 professors in all eight colleges. Reeser, as the chief operating officer, focuses on forging business alliances and developing new commercial opportunities for the results of that research.
