Ionic Industries has extended its collaboration agreement with Monash and will benefit from the energy storage expertise that has led to recent Li-S technology advances.

Over the past few days we have received a large number of inquiries regarding our work and collaboration with Monash University, and specifically with Professor Mainak Majumder and his team.  We are delighted to inform that our collaboration with Monash, and with Prof Majumder continues at full strength and was recently reaffirmed when we renewed our collaboration agreement with Monash for a further 5 years. Our renewed commitment with see our collaboration with Monash extend out well over 10 years, ensuring that we continue to develop valuable, advanced technologies in the field of graphene materials. 

Many of you have also recently seen press coverage of work on lithium-sulfur batteries that has been undertaken by some of the researchers in Prof Majumder’s team, along with other Monash teams and researchers from CSIRO and European institutions.  Their work is an incredible breakthrough in the field of lithium battery technologies and is directly attributable to the brilliance of the team at Monash.  Ionic’s work with Monash is in the field of graphene technologies (focused on next-generation super-capacitors rather than batteries) and the program of lithium sulfur work reported in the media does not directly overlap with Ionic’s work streams.  However, we are extremely privileged to have several projects that involve most of the key members of the lithium sulfur team, and we are leveraging their expertise in the field of energy storage to benefit our work on advanced, graphene-based super-capacitors. 

Supercapacitors and batteries are very distinct, and complimentary technologies, although it is advances in supercapacitors that will be taking an increasing share of energy storage applications in future.  As far back as 2011, Elon Musk expressed his confidence that super-capacitors represent the future of electric cars. In 2019, Tesla bought supercapacitor manufacturer Maxwell Technologies for well over its stock market price.   For those with questions about the difference between super-capacitors (sometimes called ultra-capacitors) and batteries, here is a few articles that help to explain the difference and why super-capacitors will play in increasingly important role in most energy storage applications in future.
https://www.supercaptech.com/battery-vs-supercapacitor
https://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/design/will-supercapacitors-supersede-batteries-2018-11/

For those interested in the lithium sulfur work at Monash, here are the media releases:
https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/1/eaay2757
https://www.smh.com.au/national/researchers-in-australia-take-key-step-toward-battery-of-the-future-20200109-p53q5s.html