A US nano-coatings firm Forge Nano has closed its latest $20million funding round as it aims to increase its share of the lithium-ion market.
The company, formerly PneumatiCoat Technologies, closed a Series A investment, led by privately held investment company Townsend Capital.
The Colorado-based start-up will use the cash to relocate to a new 12,000 sq. ft. light commercial production plant in Louisville, Colorado.
From there it plans to increase manufacturing capacity from 30-tonnes per-year to 300-tonnes per-year.
Then next year the firm is set to start on a 3,000-tonne per-year heavy commercial production plant to help it reduce costs, and to meet large-scale integration into the lithium-ion market.
The company also plans to move into other markets including catalysts, fuel cells, and advanced materials.
Forge Nano’s Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) technology enables coatings to be chemically bonded on the surface of active material particles to improve the cycle stability of next-generation anode materials such as Silicon.
So far this year the firm, which was founded in 2013, has been awarded Department of Energy phase one and two SBIR grants to investigate ALD coatings for lithium-ion anode materials and nanomanufacturing.