Ilika Plc (LON:IKA) Chief Executive Officer Graeme Purdy caught up with DirectorsTalk for an exclusive interview to discuss the latest Trading and Operational update and their one square millimetre batteries
Q1: You’ve just released a trading and operational update and it seems there’s a lot more detail in your solid state battery roadmap from when we last spoke. What can you tell me about that?
A1: Yes, I think that’s true Giles. Over the last few months, we’ve been generating performance data from the prototype batteries that have been produced by our pilot line and that’s allowed us to engage with some of the target customers for this technology. We have put that data in front of them, they’ve compared it with the specifications they’ve got for energy storage devices in their applications and together we’ve been able to draw up a set of specifications that mean that we’ve got a greater degree of confidence for the market’s that we’re trying to address.
Q2: That’s good news. Now, you’ve mentioned batteries with a footprint of just one square millimetre, what are the applications for such a small device?
A2: Yes, it’s quite an unusual size in the context of batteries that we’re normally accustomed to seeing in the shops. Really the applications here are principally in medical devices and in electronics so on-chip integration and this is one of the big differentiators of solid state battery technology in that you’re able to make functioning batteries on such a small scale and therefore enable a series of markets that frankly can’t be addressed with standard packaged lithium-ion technology.
Q3: Sounds exciting! Speaking of which, which applications is Ilika Plc most excited about?
A3: Well, I think some of these miniature applications are particularly intriguing because we haven’t really seen battery technology deployed at that scale before and so we’re unlocking markets that have previously not existed and that’s always exciting. Also actually on the one square centimetre battery format scale, these are some of the bigger markets including smart homes and also transport applications where manufacturers are looking to put distributed energy and data concepts into automotive and aerospace. You can imagine in modern aeroplanes and also even modern cars, there’s a great degree of distributed electronic functionality and powering that electronics has become a bit of a challenge in terms of the amount of weight associated with the cabling in order to connect everything together. So if you can out energy harvesters and batteries into these locations around the vehicles then actually there’s a tremendous weight-saving to be gained and that result also across saving.
