Santa Clara based Elevated Materials is getting $50 million from the Department of Energy to help fund a $100 million facility.
The plant will produce roughly 3.5 GW worth of ultra-thin lithium films a year. That's the company's proprietary ELi film, made through roll-to-roll vacuum deposition.
These films enable next-gen battery anodes. Those anodes show up in EVs, consumer electronics, defense and aviation gear, and grid-scale storage, anywhere a battery needs to charge faster and hold more energy.
The DOE's bigger bet:
DOE handed out $500 million total across seven companies through its Battery Materials Processing and Battery Manufacturing Grants program.
Elevated was one of them, tasked with scaling up domestic lithium film production so battery makers rely less on overseas supply chains.
The company's tech was originally developed in California with help from earlier DOE research funding, so this grant builds on a relationship rather than starting one.
Semiconductor roots, battery output:
Elevated was carved out of Applied Materials. That heritage matters here, since manufacturing film this thin at volume takes the kind of roll-to-roll deposition precision semiconductor makers have spent decades perfecting.
Separately, the company has already put that process to work. Over the past year, Elevated shipped more than 250,000 meters of lithium film to over 30 customers worldwide, with the company citing lithium metal anodes as its strongest area of demand.
The plant itself is still ahead. This grant is what gets it funded, not what gets it finished.
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