The Great Power Behind Chips

Most semiconductors run on power from batteries, either permanently or as a backup source. And most batteries need lithium, a mineral that is strategic and sourced from few parts of the world.

This is another case of supply chain dominance by the Asian giant.

“The world’s basically dependent on the lithium-ion chemistry today, and that lithium-ion chemistry, by definition, is really a transition of getting energy from fossil fuels to getting energy from mining minerals that we can then package into batteries,” said Keith Norman, chief sustainability officer at Lyten, a company that develops new materials for the energy and technology markets.

“You look at the best-in-class batteries today, you have lithium in there, but then you have nickel and cobalt and manganese and graphite and a number of other minerals that all come together,” Norman said.

This list compounds Beijing’s power over modern devices, including electric mobility. “Anywhere from 65 to 99% of all the materials go through China,” Norman told SIGNAL Media in an interview.

Norman’s California-based company sought a new chemical alternative to raw materials, where China dominated at several points in the supply chain.

“We started focusing on our battery solution where we bring a lithium-sulfur battery. It’s a new chemistry,” Norman added.

This new chemistry requires a super-conductive material to enhance performance.

“We’ve developed a material we call three-dimensional graphene that we make from methane, methane available everywhere in the world, from farms to landfills to hydrocarbon-based sources,” Norman said.

“By using that material, we’re able to pull out nickel, cobalt, manganese, graphite,” Norman said. Lithium cannot be avoided as a raw material, but this carbon compound reduces the need for the other materials, where China also dominates.

“From a geopolitical and energy security standpoint, we can now build these batteries entirely locally in the U.S., locally in the EU and other parts of the world,” Norman said.

This technology is not mature yet and these batteries are available only for space and unmanned vehicle applications, according to Norman. The business expects to develop its production of electric vehicles in the future.

The company has invested about a decade and almost half a billion dollars in this endeavor.