The Innovation Network Corporation of Japan (INCJ), a public-private partnership aimed at promoting innovation and enhancing the value of businesses in Japan, has backed US-based battery technology company Zeptor in a $7.2m expansion capital round of funding. The INCJ has put their faith into fellow countryman and Zeptor chief executive officer Tatsunori Suzuki to revolutionise and bolster the battery sector in Japan and elsewhere.
With the recent surge in the adoption of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet PCs and their increasing functionality, the need to reduce the size and increase the capacity of rechargeable lithium ion batteries is growing every year, said INCJ. To address this need, research institutions and corporations have been studying a variety of materials with a lot of attention on silicon as a next generation anode material that can reduce the size and increase the capacity of lithium ion batteries. Zeptor is managed by a group former Intel engineers, so there is a natural progression for the technology to be marketed to the tablet, laptop and smarphone segments.
Specialising in next generation lithium ion battery electrodes, Zeptor claims that its 3D current collectors are easily fabricated in a single-step, room temperature, and atmospheric process, which allows it to produce high-capacity silicon anodes with the same process as used for carbon anodes currently made.
Suzuki was reported as saying in the Wall Street Journal report that the first version of its technology, which could hit the market by 2015, could improve battery capacity by 30per cent, which would eventually double the capacity of batteries.
Zeptor is trying to harness expertise from Silicon Valley about what future mobile devices will need from their batteries, wrote the Wall Street Journal report. But it is also collaborating with materials companies in Japan, and Suzuki expects Zeptor’s technology will ultimately be placed in production lines in Asia.
Launched in July 2009, the INCJ has the capacity to invest $25bn. To date, it has invested YEN650bn ($6.6bn) 47 projects and is currently focused on a broad range of areas from green energy, electronics, IT and biotechnology to infrastructure related sectors, such as water supply.
The INCJ is capitalised at 280 billion yen ($2.8bn), with the Japanese government injecting 266 billion yen and 27 private corporations, such as Sharp Corporation providing a further 14 billion yen. The government will also provide guarantees up to a total of 1,800 billion yen for INCJ investments, giving it an investment capability of approximately 2,000 billion yen. The INCJ will be established for a period of 15 years.