Silicon anode startup Leydenjar raises money for the home stretch

Christian Rood is a happy man. And why wouldn’t he be, having recently closed a 22-million-euro investment round. “Investors will only put money into companies like Leydenjar, which don’t generate much revenue yet, if their prospects are bright. Clearly, our investors are impressed by the technological progress we’re making, by our efforts to industrialize our manufacturing equipment and by the companies that have started working with us,” says the CEO of Leydenjar Technologies.

The startup founded in 2016 has developed a lithium-ion battery anode made entirely from silicon. This metalloid is an excellent host for lithium ions but in bulk form has a propensity to crack under the constant stress of taking in and letting go of its guest. Leydenjar adopted a plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) process originally developed for thin-film solar cells to manufacture nanotextured silicon that can accommodate the volume changes associated with lithium loading and unloading.