BELTSVILLE, Md. - ION Storage Systems (ION), a solid-state battery (SSB) technology company, has announced that it has invested in a new pilot production ceramic sintering furnace at its Beltsville, MD facility. The equipment is intended to increase ION's annual ceramic production capacity by ~1,000x and unlock the ability to rapidly scale to hundreds of megawatt-hours (MWh) through future expansion.
Sintering is a processing step in forming ION's ceramic electrolyte, which is the core of its solid-state battery technology. ION's investment in this new equipment represents a milestone that will position the company to ramp up the delivery of its patented solid-state battery cells for customers across market segments.
ION's proprietary ceramic solid-state platform is based on a compressionless, anodeless, and 3D-structured architecture, eliminating the high-pressure packaging constraints that have previously hindered the adoption of solid-state batteries. The new advanced process equipment is designed to support this architecture, optimizing the sintering process to produce ceramic electrolyte without compromise at scale.
Unlike conventional solid-state designs that require pressure to maintain contact between layers, ION's zero-compression approach enables modular and scalable stacking, leading to improved safety, manufacturability, and design flexibility for a wide range of energy storage applications.
This investment follows ION's successful production of multi-layer solid-state battery cells on its semi-automated manufacturing line, marking another step in scaling its compression-free architecture toward full commercialization.
