Feon Energy develops new liquid electrolyte molecules to enable future batteries that are 50 percent lighter and 20 percent cheaper while reducing dependency on critical minerals.
FELLOWS
Zhiao Yu
Zhiao Yu received his B.S. in materials chemistry from Peking University as an honored undergraduate and earned his Ph.D. in chemistry from Stanford University. In late 2022, Yu co-founded Feon Energy Inc. to commercialize his doctoral research on practical high-energy lithium metal and anode-free batteries. Following an internship at Tesla in Cell Manufacturing Engineering, Yu was a research scientist in artificial intelligence for science at ByteDance.
Wenxiao Huang
Wenxiao Huang is the CEO and co-founder of Feon Energy, which aims to develop batteries that permit electric vehicles to travel 700 miles on a 10-minute charge. Previously, he led development at EnerVenue, focusing on megawatt-level batteries using innovative chemistry, and was a postdoctoral research fellow at Stanford University, specializing in safety and fast charging for high-energy batteries. With a Ph.D. in physics, Huang has published over 40 articles and holds five patents.
TECHNOLOGY
Critical Need
To battle climate challenges, we must electrify the world by providing cost-effective, safe batteries with high energy density and long cycle life. Today's lithium-ion battery is reaching its theoretical energy density limit and cannot meet the increasing demand from consumer electronics and electric vehicles/aircraft for more energy-dense batteries. LMBs offer higher energy density than current lithium-ion technology. However, poor cycle life hinders the implementation of LMBs.
Technology Vision
Incompatibility between the lithium metal anode and the liquid electrolyte solvents currently used in LMBs causes lithium dendrites, the notorious disease of LMBs, and thus poor cycle life. Inspired by the pharmaceutical industry’s approach to creating new drug molecules to treat diseases, Feon has developed new organic-molecule-based electrolytes to solve the “disease” of LMBs and enable high-energy-density LMBs with long cycle life. This will drastically improve the battery performance of consumer electronics as well as those of electric vehicles and aircraft.
Potential for Impact
Feon Energy will play a profound role in creating a lower-carbon world. According to a Department of Energy study, EVs create 22 percent of the carbon emissions that conventional gasoline vehicles produce. If the roughly 290 million cars currently in the U.S. today were replaced by EVs, the CO₂ savings would amount to 1.4 billion tons of carbon annually, which equals 3.8 percent of current global annual carbon emissions.