Innovative Battery Technology Developed at Rutgers Licensed to Battery Safety Consortium’s IP Exchange
Publish Date: 2026-06-17 15:35:00
Source Domain: www.newswise.com
An innovative current collector concept developed a decade ago by Rutgers School of Engineering professor Glenn Amatucci and his team could help make batteries safer around the world.
“The technology we developed makes batteries lighter, potentially smaller, and safer, all of which are critical, especially in areas such as avionics,” said Amatucci. “For example, in a standard lithium-ion battery, which are used for everything from everyday consumer electronics to smart home gadgets to electric vehicles, the conventional current collectors are thin foils of aluminum and copper, perhaps the thickness of a strand of hair. We created current collectors made of polymers that are then coated with thin films of metal, around 20 times thinner than a strand of hair.”
The U.S. Department of Energy’s website explains that batteries feature two electrical terminals, the cathode (positive side) and the anode (negative side), and in between them is a chemical material called an electrolyte, through which ions (electrically charged atoms) flow. According to Dr. Amatucci, the electrons that emerge from each electrode move to the current collectors, which then deliver the energy as power to the connected devices.
The technology pioneered by the Energy Storage Research Group (ESRG) within Rutgers-New Brunswick, led by Dr. Amatucci along with his team co-inventors, Anna Halajko and Linda Wu Sung, is cheaper to produce than standard current collectors, offers flexibility for wearable battery technologies, unique porosity to enable electrolyte distribution throughout the cell which increases performance uniformity and reduces electrolyte activation time during cell manufacture, and less volume. In addition, it offers an added safety benefit, which Soteria has promoted with its own polymer-based current collectors: when batteries using these current collectors reach a certain temperature, the polymer melts, retracts, and automatically shuts off the…
