Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - DuraCap (The first ultra-thin, flexible and durable pseudocapacitor fully integrated in a device for low power applications)

Teaser

Currently, the interest in flexible and thin electronic devices with a wide range of applications including mobile devices, healthcare, smart surfaces or wearables among others is growing. All of these applications require electrical power, so traditionally they have been...

Summary

Currently, the interest in flexible and thin electronic devices with a wide range of applications including mobile devices, healthcare, smart surfaces or wearables among others is growing. All of these applications require electrical power, so traditionally they have been connected to conventional batteries or grid power where appropriate. However, the characteristics of conventional batteries such as their limited mechanical flexibility (bulky, rigid and non-flexible) makes them unsuitable for powering flexible electronics.
The need for thin and flexible energy storage for electronic devices has driven industries to look for alternative solutions and sources. Energy harvesting techniques have increasingly been adopted for wireless devices to provide a self-sustaining energy supply. The environment provides infinite ambient energy, including piezoelectric, thermal, vibration, and photovoltaic energy. However, all energy harvesting systems need energy storage for times when the energy cannot be harvested. This energy storage device must have some specific characteristics such as a long-term lifetime (> 10 years), a long shelf- time (not limited) without performance changes, efficiency, and flexibility. Typically, the existing solutions based on batteries cannot offer all of these features, therefore, supercapacitors and thin film lithium-ion batteries have been developed as the best alternative for applications of energy harvesting.
Why is not thin film Li-ion battery the best solution? Despite of a lot of developments to improve thin film lithium-ion batteries and their advantages such as their high operating voltage (3.9V) and continuous current (1.25mA/cm2), moderate high discharge rate (0.3-8.2 oC), and low prices (€7-10); they still require more frequent recharge because of their minuscule size. For these reasons, the supercapacitors have surpassed thin film batteries for energy storage.
Supercapacitors are electronic devices that can store and deliver energy faster than conventional batteries. Among their special features are their ability to turn on instantaneously, charge quickly, and require less complicated charging circuits. Other important supercapacitor characteristics include high power densities andvery long lifetimes regardless of the number of charge cycles. These features make them very attractive for applications such as micro-energy harvesting applications, wireless telecommunications, etc. In comparison with electrostatic double-layer capacitors (EDLCs), thin film solid-state supercapacitors are more attractive as energy storage cells in the field of low power devices such as RFID tags, smart cards, internet of things (IoT), etc. For a wearable wireless device, the power sources life is crucial since some devices need to run on 24/7 such as medical devices (pacemaker or medical patches among others).
The final aim of Silent Energy Solutions is developing the world’s first commercial energy harvester, energy storage and power management in a single device. The ability to work and survive at high temperatures (-15 to +250 oC) gives our pseudocapacitor a unique ability to integrate it into materials such as polymers or elastomers, or deposite the device in material that suffer high temperature in the manufacturing process (vulcanization, etc.) such as rubber. This creates a market to develop ultra-low power systems for applications that were not previously possible such as tyres. We will be able to tailor and custom build the ultra-low power system to meet the client’s specific performance requirements.

Work performed

Silent Energy Solutions, has completed a full analysis of the technical and commercial potential of the Duracap technology and validated and confirmed the exciting business opportunity. Smart lenses was identified as a high growth sector for the Duracap technology. This was confirmed by Verily that stated that they would be interested in pre-qualification products in 2020-21.

Through the focus on delivering DuraCaps for the Smart Contact Lens and Tyre requirements we are well prepared to address a number of similar opportunities in Health, Medical, Sports, Automotive, Aerospace, Civil Defence and Luxury goods. This is because we will be able to provide the smallest, thinnest pseudocapacitor that can survive harsh manufacturing processes like vulcanisation or injection moulding.

Through this study we have forged strong relationships with CEA Leti in France and Ilika in the UK. The CEA Leti relationship will enable us to operate as a fabless company and minimise our capital investement. We anticipate that the R&D program that will enable us to take Duracap from TRL6 to 9 will be of the order of €2.3M over 24 months.

In summary thanks to the grant we have been able to establish strong relationships with the following stakeholders

Research and Technology Comberry LLC (Russia), CEA Leti (France) & CPI (UK)
Licensees Ilika, Verily
Power Management Suppliers e-Peas (Belgium)
Financing SMT House AB (Sweden)
Production Equipment Intramolecular (USA) and Applied Materials (USA)

DuraCaps current cashflow is forecasting the following cumulative revenue for the first 5 years:
• royalty revenue of € 20,957,710,
• License Revenue € 20,900,000 and
• Product Development of € 5,700,000 over 5 years.
• Staffing will increase from 8 to 28 by the fifth year.

2019 Key milestones Achieved
• Partnerships with CEA Leti and Ilika
• Signed Exclusive license with Thinika LLC to exploit PseudoCapacitor
• Market Research and Letters of Interest from key customers like Verily
• Complete H2020 SME Stage 1 Report

Final results

As the cost of these devices continue to drop and people realise the value of the information (analytics-driven profit factor) they can get out of them, these devices will continue to be deployed in an exponential massive scale.

We will target customers designing high-volume applications which are:
• Size & form factor critical
• Mission critical
• Safety critical
• Human Centric

The lightweight form factor, as well as the flexibility, is a commonly required energy storage feature in the medical sector where coin cell batteries cannot perform.

Comparing tyres and contact lenses high lights yet more similarities in terms of the market drivers which are to keep people safe, provide best possible quality of life, maximise utilization of resources and be easy to use. The Total Addressable market for tyres per annum is approximately 2 billion and for presbyopia worldwide is about 1 billion and if we add in Type 2 diabetes it is another 1 billion.

We forecast the following overall social and economic impact can be described and quantified as follows:
- Labour Increasing employment within 5 years we will employ 30 to 60 staff creating a pool of very skilled staff that are critical for the next generation of IOT
- Supply Chain across materials, process and measurement equipment, system integrators, distributors, schools and academia.
- End-user customers positive impacts across many verticals and as power requirements decline for IOT more and more opportunities will arise.
- Science, Engineering and Technology
- Technology roadmap of optimization and integration with complementary technology for ultra low power for IOT
- Making the EU a global leader in the materials and technology

Website & more info

More info: http://www.silent.energy.