Next-Gen Battery Electrolyte Boosts Safety, Performance Without Manufacturing DisruptionNext-Gen Battery Electrolyte Boosts Safety, Performance Without Manufacturing Disruption

Anthro Energy, a material manufacturer and developer of scalable solutions to solve the tradeoff between battery energy density and safety, has launched its proprietary Anthro Proteus electrolyte technology.

The company recognized the need for a novel electrolyte technology and developed Anthro Proteus, featuring many advantages of solid electrolytes while being 100% compatible with widely installed battery manufacturing infrastructure.

This technology is deployed like conventional liquid electrolytes by injecting a liquid precursor into the battery. Once inside the cell, a liquid to solid transition occurs, creating a mechanically solid polymer material inside the battery without changing the standard manufacturing process. The polymer material also forms a protective secondary binder network around the battery's active materials, unlocking improved performance and extended cycle life.

Anthro Proteus is nonflammable and mechanically robust, improving battery safety by reducing the frequency and severity of thermal runaway events. Furthermore, the material forms a continuous interface within the battery, solving problems with interfacial resistance and allowing cells to operate with zero externally applied pressure.

Providing performance, safety, and mechanical integrity, Anthro Proteus represents a new class of injectable phase-change electrolytes that transforms conventional battery manufacturing by imparting advanced features into lithium-ion batteries without changing existing manufacturing processes.

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Led by cofounder and CEO David Mackanic, Anthro has already qualified the technology in commercial products, with current production underway and a new pilot facility opening in California in mid-2025. The breakthrough enables nonflammable, mechanically robust batteries that can operate with zero external pressure while extending cycle life through a protective secondary binder network.

Mackanic started the company in 2021 after finishing his PhD at Stanford University. The goal was to commercialize advanced battery materials.

“We spun out of Stanford and were funded by a number of grant programs from Stanford, including the Department of Energy, and the Department of Defense," said Mackanic. The Anthro team has grown since the Stanford lab days. There are now 30 team members at Anthro Energy.

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Anthro Proteus is chemistry agnostic, and it’s highly tunable. Mackanic and his team have demonstrated this technology with other types of batteries — cylindrical cells, pouch cells, coin cells — the product works with all diverse types of batteries.

“We focus mostly on Lithium ion, we do a lot with silicon anode materials, and we are working with next-generation materials like LFP (Lithium Iron Phosphate), LFMP (Lithium Manganese Iron Phosphate), and we have proof of concept with sodium ion," said Mackanic. He added that at Stanford, he worked with the materials on sodium-ion batteries. But some sodium ion batteries have issues with gas generation and swelling, and capacity fade due to that, and Anthro Proteus could help sodium ion batteries with that.

Anthro Proteus has been tested in about a half dozen battery labs across the country, including pilot scale and production scale manufacturing for defense and consumer electronics applications, and in pilot applications for EV (electric vehicle) batteries. So, it has been used in a wide range of locations — in addition to thousands of batteries that we produce at Anthro Energy that use the technology.

The platform could be used in storage applications as well. “Typically, you want a battery cell and a technology that has been proven in the field for several years before you install it at that large scale, so storage is not our focus right now.

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“But as regulations ramp up concerning battery safety, our technology will be really important to enable that large-scale energy storage. Though it is probably several years down the road for us, it is something that we are working on,” Mackanic added.

Anthro Proteus

Because it stabilizes the battery you can get higher energy density and you can get 2x improved cycle life, which we have proved. On a cost per kw hour or cost per cycle of the battery, our tech can reduce it pretty significantly even though the cost of the materials is a little more than traditional materials.

This electrolyte is compatible with existing manufacturing infrastructure and allows today’s battery manufacturers to create next-gen batteries with ease.