The funding brings the amount raised to more than $125 million and includes participation of financial institutions from Israel and China, as well as existing investors such as Samsung Ventures and Norma Investments, representing Roman Abramovich, the owner of Chelsea Football Club.
Daimler will become a strategic partner of StoreDot and work with the company on fast-charging for electric vehicles. Samsung took a similar strategic position with StoreDot in 2013 to work on batteries for smartphones (Samsung spots startup’s quantum-dot potential). It is not known that the technology has yet produced any exploitable results for Samsung.
Quantum dots are nanocrystals of semiconductor material where the physical dimensions are sufficiently small to allow quantum mechanics to effect the electronic properties. This also means that the electronic properties are tunable depending on the shape and size of the nanocrystals. StoreDot’s breakthrough is the discovery of bio-organic quantum dot materials. Previous quantum dot materials have included toxic materials such as arsenic or heavy metals such as cadmium. StoreDot has claimed potential applications in non-volatile memory and displays as well as in energy storage.
StoreDot claims its FlashBattery technology enables charging an electric vehicle in the same time it takes to fill an automobile’s gas tank. StoreDot also claims that the five minutes it takes to reach full charge it can provide enough energy to keep a vehicle going for 300 miles or more – assuming there is sufficient battery capacity.
StoreDot’s batteries are still in development and are expected to be designed into electric vehicles that are now in their design phase.
Related links and articles:
News articles:
Samsung spots startup’s quantum-dot potential
Organic QD startup shows 55-inch display
EE Times Silicon 60: 2016’s Emerging Companies to Watch