FOCALSPEC TERMINATED

Project "FOCALSPEC" data sheet

The following table provides information about the project.

 Partnership

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 Project objective

With the market appetite for electric cars and consumer electronics increasing globally, battery manufacturers need to pack higher capacities into ever-smaller battery sizes. This sets extreme demands on manufacturing precision to ensure battery safety. Failing to do so caused for example the global Samsung smartphone recall in 2016 – microscopic imperfections in electrodes were too small to detect. Those imperfections led the batteries to short circuits, putting consumers in direct danger. While this might sound like a small issue concerning high-end smartphones – imagine if similar incidents happen in electric cars.

FocalSpec revolutionary 3D imaging sensors offer laboratory level measurement accuracy for detecting microscopic imperfections on battery electrodes at the speed of manufacturing lines (moving 3 meters per second). Our technology enables carrying out submicron-level analysis of shapes, profiles, textures, thicknesses, dimensions, roughness, etc. No other industrial measurement solution, including laser, is able to combine such speed and precision. Other quality control systems cannot distinguish between 2D and 3D defects at so high speed, and are therefore not reliable in e.g. high capacity Li-ion battery manufacturing.

Having validated the technical feasibility and major market demand for on-line version of our sensors, we will prepare our technology for wide scale adoption during this Phase 2 project. Our main objective is increasing the speed of our core 3D imaging sensors by over 100x and implementing it into a new, real-time measurement sensor that will significantly improve Li-ion battery safety in electric cars, which is a major up-and-coming growth area for the European industry. This opens up a total addressable market of over €1 billion already in the first five years following the project.