Press Clips

UNIGRID Fully Charged for Increased Production

San Diego Business Journal | November 5, 2025

UNIGRID, Inc. is poised to expand its production capacity 20-fold over the next year following the sodium-ion battery company's rapid growth in foundry partnerships. "We are a fabless battery company," CEO Darren Tan said. "So we work with battery foundries to produce what we need; we buy commodity materials, we ship to them, they make it based on our proprietary recipe and the finished products get shipped directly to the customer." Tan co-founded the company with CTO Erik Wu out of UC San Diego, where both men completed their PhDs. Full Story

The best source of critical minerals is driving down U.S. streets

The Washington Post | October 29, 2025

When an EV battery dies somewhere in North America, there's a good chance it'll wind up at Redwood Materials, the company that runs the biggest lithium-ion battery recycling plant in the United States, to be reborn. Redwood Materials has also debuted a more direct way to reuse old EV batteries: putting them to work powering microgrids. "Secondary use is a no-brainer," said Zheng Chen, a nanoengineering professor at the University of California San Diego. "You have a lot of old batteries which are still okay. It's good to use them before you send them into the recycling proces Full Story

Can new chemistry make EVs that charge in 5 min or less?

C&EN | June 12, 2025

The thing holding back EV adoption right now--besides the relatively high sticker price--is how long it takes to charge the battery. Making a battery that charges faster is not simple; it requires understanding the shortcomings of each component down to the molecular level. Nor is it easy to scale up a new battery's manufacturing to millions of units. Battery start-ups and larger labs scrutinize materials in every part of electric vehicle systems, especially anodes. Full Story

ExPost Lithium Battery Restoration Finding Public, Private Support

San Diego Business Journal | November 6, 2024

Researchers at UC San Diego want a better way to recycle lithium batteries. For several years, a team of scientists have studied how to reduce the economic and environmental cost of lithium battery recycling, which mainly involves extracting a battery's expensive metals. That research led to the formation of ExPost Technology Inc., which was spun out of UCSD in 2022. ExPost utilizes a process of targeted treatment on the degraded parts of a battery to restore them to their pristine state and replenish a battery's supply of lithium. Full Story

Advancing Safer Battery Solutions with South 8 Technologies

Azo Materials | November 5, 2024

In this interview, the CEO of South 8 Technologies discusses how the company's innovative LiGas® technology is advancing safer lithium-ion battery solutions and addressing challenges across defense, EV, and industrial applications. South 8 was co-founded by UC San Diego Ph.D. engineering alumni Cyrus Rustomji and Jungwoo Lee. Full Story