Nexeon has been given two major accolades at this year’s Rushlight Awards, including the overall Clean Energy Award. This award recognises the progress made by Nexeon in developing silicon-based anodes for next generation lithium ion (Li-ion) batteries.

Nexeon also won the Powered Transport Award – given for the most significant advancement leading to commercial development of cleaner transport and a significantly improved embedded environmental footprint.

These achievements for technology and innovation achievements are all the remarkable as Nexeon won two similar Rushlight awards two years ago. The Rushlight Awards are the only awards for technology developers across the whole cleantech spectrum, and Nexeon was in the company of strong competition from several sectors including the production and usage of energy, fuel, power generation, waste and water.

Recognition for Nexeon comes for its work in enabling the replacement of carbon anodes in Li-ion batteries with silicon, resulting in increased energy density and longer time between charges. This development can speed up the adoption of electric and hybrid vehicles, as well as reducing disposal issues associated with single use cells in consumer applications. Another important target application of the technology is the storage of off-grid energy from renewable sources such as wind and solar.

This year, the awards were presented at a black tie event at Church House, Westminster, attended by over 150 senior representatives from industry, government and the UK science base. Collecting the awards for Nexeon, Dr Bill Macklin, CTO said: “We are naturally delighted that the significance of the whole team’s achievements has been recognized. Our technical progress is being accompanied by strong commercial traction in global markets.”

Nexeon recently announced that it had begun a collaboration with a global tier one automotive OEM with a view to optimising the company’s technology for electric vehicle applications, and last year raised £40 million for the establishment of a 250 tonnes/pa manufacturing facility.

Nexeon will be represented by Dr Scott Brown who is well experienced in dealing with Japanese corporations, having lived and worked there for several years. Among the technology streams to be discussed are green ICT and energy management systems, including introducing Smart Grid Technology and Smart Community to reduce CO2 emissions.

Meetings and site visits will be held in Osaka and Tokyo, as well as networking with leading Japanese corporations such as: Panasonic, Sharp, Hitachi, Fujitsu and NTT.

The joint development agreement, which is worth ‘several million pounds’, will see the two companies co-operate in the development and evaluation of Nexeon’s silicon materials. These are designed to replace carbon as the anode of Li-ion batteries. Silicon has major advantages over carbon for vehicle batteries, being capable of delivering a significantly greater power to weight performance, and delivering more energy between charges.

Scientists at Nexeon and their OEM partner will be able to modify the structural properties of the special silicon materials to achieve the best balance of properties for electric vehicle use. Capabilities such as energy stored, time between charges and peak available current can be adjusted by modifications to the proprietary production process.

Nexeon moved to a new, larger site in 2010 and has now completed commissioning of a major new pilot plant that will be the focus for much of the optimisation work. The plant is an important asset, allowing the Nexeon team to simulate the production processes seen in full scale battery manufacture, and to gain realistic costing data.

“This is an important step for silicon anode technology in the automotive sector”, said Dr Scott Brown, CEO of Nexeon. “We plan to work with leading partners with the capability to introduce our products directly into their supply chain. In automotive, being able to reduce the ‘range anxiety’ factor will allow a much faster adoption of EVs in many countries.”

Nexeon recently announced plans to build a 250 tonne/annum manufacturing facility in the UK and has raised £55 million in total, giving it the capability of commercial levels of materials supply.

This is the second year running that Nexeon has been listed in the prestigious Cleantech Connect ‘Ones to Watch’ listing for leading edge technology companies. The listing is published by leading investment banking firm GP Bullhound. Andre Shortell, Partner, GP Bullhound, and a member of the Judging Panel, said: “Cleantech is such a fast moving space, and there are many innovative players entering each year. We have found the quantity and the quality of this year’s entries to be extremely high.  It speaks volumes about the coming of age of a number of Cleantech sectors.”

Nexeon is attracting high profile attention through its development of next generation lithium-ion rechargeable battery technology, and has demonstrated Li-ion batteries with double the capacity and with better recharge cycle-life than currently available commercial batteries. Nexeon already has joint development or materials evaluation agreements in place with a number of major global OEMs and battery companies, with a view to adoption of the technology in their sectors.

Earlier this year, the Company raised £40million from its investors including Imperial Innovations, and announced plans to establish UK manufacturing operations to produce its silicon anode material in commercial volumes of 250 tonnes/year.

“We are naturally delighted to be given this important accolade”, said Dr Scott Brown, CEO of Nexeon last night. “It is a very important time for us as the application potential for our technology is now very clear in several sectors including automotive, consumer electronics and off-grid energy storage.”

The BEEA Best Design Team Award category recognises criteria such as the degree of innovation applied, as well as how well the design team met the project milestones and the selection and application of technology.

Nexeon’s anode technology is based on silicon which is a naturally superior material for this application, but which brings challenges of dimensional stability. This is where the Nexeon team has triumphed by producing silicon morphologies which are stable and allow increased cell capacity with hundreds of charge cycles and practical discharge rates, as required by applications ranging from cell phones, laptops and many other consumer devices to electric vehicles and the storage of renewable energy.

Commenting at the award ceremony in London yesterday, Dr Scott Brown, CEO, said: “I am immensely proud of our scientists and engineers, who have really pushed forward the frontiers of what is possible. At the same time, we have materials under evaluation with “tier one” battery companies with plans for commercialisation in the near future.”

In July, Nexeon closed a £40 million funding round and announced plans to create a manufacturing capability for silicon-based battery materials of up to 250 tonnes per annum.

Rechargeable lithium-ion battery technology has received a huge boost with the investment of £40 million in Nexeon. The Series C investment was led by existing investor Imperial Innovations Group and included Invesco Perpetual; both organisations are existing investors.

Nexeon plans to use the new funding to establish a world class manufacturing facility, scaling up the production of its latest silicon anode materials to around 250 tonnes per annum, representing a commercial supply level. Use of silicon anodes in Li-ion batteries produces a significantly higher performance and overcomes the limitations of present-day technology. Batteries with higher energy density can offer longer time between charges, higher power output, smaller size or a combination of these benefits. They are eagerly awaited for application in cell phones, laptops and many other consumer devices, as well as having important application in electric vehicles and in storage of renewable energy.

The latest funding brings the total raised by Nexeon to £55 million, and will allow the company further to accelerate application development and to increase support to its customers. The investment comes at an ideal time for Nexeon as strong progress is being made in commercial negotiations and customer-led projects. Customer traction is now being gained with major global companies in the fields of consumer electronics and automotive in particular.

Nexeon’s technology has reached unprecedented levels of performance in the last year, and the company recently announced that it had it produced sample cells with significantly higher capacity for their size than the best current commercial equivalents. As Nexeon expands the scope of its activities it will be looking to create and fill a number of key commercial, technical and supply chain positions.

“This is the next step in an amazing journey for this exciting UK start up”, says Nexeon Chairman Dr Paul Atherton, who founded the company back in 2005 with Professor Mino Green of Imperial College. “It’s a superb example of UK high value manufacturing involving sophisticated advanced materials, and this funding will enable Nexeon to establish the first in a series of manufacturing plants that will be needed to serve demand worldwide.”

“We are naturally delighted at the support shown by our investors who see the potential of our silicon anode technology and the excellent progress being made by our team”, said Dr Scott Brown, CEO of Nexeon. “With the strong financial backing of Innovations and Invesco Perpetual, we are well placed and very much on track to meet our customers’ needs and to achieve our commercial ambitions.”

Susan Searle, Imperial Innovations’ CEO, said: “This new funding round will enable Nexeon to scale up its production facilities, in keeping with Innovations’ strategy to accelerate the development of its advanced portfolio companies, and to stay with those companies for longer. We are privileged to work alongside Nexeon’s world class team as they continue the development of their battery technology and set up a leading edge manufacturing facility.”

Last month, Nexeon was presented with the Green Technology award at Venturefest in recognition of the company’s innovative technology and demonstrable commercial potential.

Nexeon’s success is based on its work with lithium ion (Li-ion) batteries that use silicon in place of carbon. From the environmental standpoint, by producing batteries with much higher performance, the technology will accelerate the adoption of electric vehicles and support the use of rechargeable batteries in place of disposable ones. Li-ion batteries can also contribute to better storage of off-grid energy.

Nexeon was presented with the award at Venturefest, the business creation networking event held in Oxford as part of the Venturefest programme. A presentation was made to the panel of expert judges. Nexeon also exhibited in the Innovation Showcase.

The Martin and Audrey Wood Enterprise Awards celebrate entrepreneurs and innovative companies. They were established by Oxford Innovation in honour of Sir Martin and Lady Wood, who co-founded Oxford Instruments plc in 1959 and continue to support start-up and growing companies.

“We are honoured to have received this award”, said Dr Scott Brown, CEO of Nexeon. “It is good to see so many quality companies working on environmental initiatives, and we are especially proud to have had our progress recognised.”

Nexeon is no stranger to the limelight, having picked up several major awards last year.

Said Steve Bush, Editor: “…2011 looks like it might just be the year when the fairy godmother turns up and anodes go silicon”. The article referenced Nexeon’s announcement in December that it had developed a prototype silicon anode 18650-size cell that not only exceeded the capacity of commercial cells (at 3.2Ah with C/3 discharge), but beat them on cycle life as well.

Nexeon has produced Li-ion battery cells with the world’s highest capacity for their size. The cells, which are based on Nexeon’s silicon anode technology, have a capacity of 3.2Ah and were produced at the Company’s pilot plant in Oxfordshire. This is above the capacity of even the best commercially available Li-ion batteries, and opens up the possibility of longer operating times for consumer electronic products and greater range for electric vehicles. Cycle life performance of the Nexeon cells also exceeds that of the best commercial cell when tested under the same conditions.

This milestone is an important stage in the ongoing development of batteries based on silicon anodes, now thought to be the best route to next generation Li-ion performance. The performance of the latest cells is even more remarkable as they have not benefited from the optimisation which comes from the volume production of commercial cells.

Lithium-ion batteries dominate the rechargeable batteries market through their higher specifications, low self-discharge rate and absence of ‘memory effect’, but further progress is limited while carbon is used for the anode material. Silicon has been known to be a superior material, but has suffered from physical instability during charge cycles. By modifying the physical form (‘morphology’) of the silicon, Nexeon is unleashing its full potential as a battery anode.

Today’s commercial carbon-based Li-ion cells offer capacities of between 2.5Ah and 3.1Ah. The achievement of 3.2Ah with the latest ’18650′ type cells was carried out at a realistic discharge rate (known as C/3), that is representative of real market applications. Nexeon has achieved even higher capacities with lower discharge rates. Nexeon’s technology road map will deliver 18650 cells with a capacity of 4Ah next year, based on optimisation of first generation silicon anode materials.

“These performance figures show how the use of silicon allows us to break through the capacity ‘ceiling’ for 18650 cells which is seen with carbon-based anodes“, said Dr Scott Brown, CEO of Nexeon. “It is a tremendous achievement, and I’m immensely proud of our technical team. To have already exceeded the performance of cells made in volume by the world’s best manufacturers gives us another huge confidence boost in the potential of our approach.”

In addition to powering today’s ubiquitous gadgets, high performance batteries are also increasingly important as energy storage systems for the various types of clean energy systems now being developed.

Nexeon has recently been recognised by nomination in The Engineer Technology & Innovation Awards, has gained a listing in the 2010 Global Cleantech 100 and was included in the European Cleantech Connect Top 15 list of ‘Ones to watch in Cleantech‘.