HiT Nano manufactures advanced cathode materials for lithium-ion and sodium-ion batteries. The company’s novel manufacturing technology significantly reduces processing time, energy input, carbon output, and generated waste while delivering state-of-the-art, high-capacity, high-power, and long-lifetime cathode materials.
FELLOWS
Ian McKendry
Ian McKendry is the COO of HiT Nano, which develops advanced manufacturing technologies for lithium-ion and sodium-ion battery cathode materials. He received his Ph.D. in inorganic chemistry from Temple University and conducted his postdoctoral work at Drexel University and Los Alamos National Lab. Ian’s research background spans materials chemistry, electrochemistry, and process scale-up—and he is passionate about delivering scalable solutions to drive the clean energy transition.
Christopher Abram is the CTO of HiT Nano, a company developing advanced manufacturing for energy storage materials, including lithium- and sodium-ion battery cathodes. He grew up in Cornwall, U.K., and studied mechanical engineering at Bristol University and Imperial College London, focusing on thermal and fluid science, optical metrology, and particle technology. He has worked in Magdeburg, Germany, and Princeton, New Jersey, as a Marie Curie Fellow to develop aerosol technology for manufacturing luminescent particles and battery materials.
Christopher Abram
TECHNOLOGY
Critical Need
Advanced batteries, powered by next-generation electrode materials, are critical to the clean energy transition. These materials are manufactured with numerous processing steps with significant energy input and waste streams. Innovative, low-cost, low-carbon manufacturing methods are needed to support the growing battery supply chain to deliver the cathode materials required for advanced batteries.
Technology Vision
HiT Nano’s manufacturing technology consolidates the energy-intensive, multi-step cathode manufacturing process into a single-step flow process while delivering state-of-the-art sodium-ion and lithium-ion cathode materials. This modular reactor system is highly flexible to various cathode chemistries, offering significant savings in processing time, energy input, carbon production, water consumption, and waste generation. HiT Nano’s technology offers unique control of the surface properties and cathode particle size, enabling high-capacity, high-power-output, and long-lifetime materials to power the next generation of low-cost, high-performance batteries.
Potential for Impact
HiT Nano’s vision is to deliver high-performance, low-cost cathode materials that will power the advanced batteries of the future. HiT Nano’s manufacturing technology will help drive the growth in domestic battery supply chain material manufacturing through significant processing time savings (>90 percent), production costs (>50 percent), and energy and CO2 requirements (50-75 percent). These process savings deliver battery-cell-level savings (ren-30 percent) while improving battery energy and power densities. This will drive low-cost electric transportation and energy storage.