High Volume Solid-State Battery Manufacturing Facility Opens

Cymbet Corporation announced that it has reached an agreement with X-FAB Texas Inc., to open the world’s highest volume solid-state battery (SSB) production facility in Lubbock, Texas. This new advanced EnerChip™ SSB production facility significantly increases Cymbet’s manufacturing capacity to supply the growing global demand for Cymbet’s EnerChip devices. Financing for this project was secured through a partnership with the Lubbock Economic Development Alliance (LEDA), Texas Economic Development Bank, X-FAB Texas, Inc., and Cymbet Corporation.

The new Cymbet facility implements a “fab in a foundry concept” where the EnerChip manufacturing capability is integrated within X-FAB’s Lubbock facility. Production will start in second quarter 2011 with additional space set aside for future growth.

Cymbet EnerChip rechargeable solid state devices are packaged as a Surface Mount Technology (SMT) component, providing energy storage in a form factor and with a convenience not previously attainable using conventional solutions such as lithium coin cells or supercapacitors. The company says the EnerChip family is well suited for applications where battery backup power is needed to maintain the settings of microcontroller memories, real-time-clocks and SRAM during power loss or power failures. EnerChip devices can provide back-up power ranging from a few hours to several weeks depending on the stand-by current requirements of the system.

Since EnerChips can be charge cycled many thousands of times, an EnerChip has the same energy storage equivalency of much larger coin cell batteries. For example, the 50uAh EnerChip CBC050 is rechargeable 5000 times at a 10% depth of discharge. This yeilds an EC of 25mAh using the conservative datasheet charge cycle specifications for this device. Therefore, the smaller footprint EnerChip has the same effective capacity of a much larger problematic coin cell battery.