The idea of Litona was born during Sebastian Büchele's research stay in 2021/22 in the research group of Prof. Michael Metzger and Prof. Jeff Dahn at Dalhousie University. Due to the lack of commercially available sodium-ion cathode active material, Sebastian decided to produce his own material on a large scale.
After a brief search, the ideal location was found at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Prof. Helmut Ehrenberg's Institute for Applied Materials - Energy Storage Systems (IAM-ESS). Within the research group Synthesis and Ceramic Powder Technology of Dr. Joachim Binder, all the necessary equipment and know-how for the material's optimization was found. In addition, the connection to the Post Lithium Storage Cluster of Excellence (POLiS) allows unrestricted exchange with numerous experts.
After a successful first scale-up of Prussian White in the Helmholtz Energy Materials Foundry (HEMF), Sebastian won the KIT Responsible Innovation Challenge in May 2023, enabling further scale-up of the material.
Tom Bötticher and Noah Keim joined the project in July 2023, before Litona was founded in August 2023 to accelerate research on sodium-ion battery cells and expand research worldwide.
In early 2024, Litona began selling its cathode material. In March 2024, Tom Bötticher was appointed Co-Managing Director of Litona. Shortly afterwards, we closed our first pre-seed funding round, which enables us to build our own laboratory facilities and further scale our products.
