Gelion (AIM:GELN) on Monday announced that the National Laboratory of the Rockies (NLR) has independently validated its Nano-Encapsulated Sulfur (NES) cathode active material, with test cells retaining 92% of reference capacity despite a 20-fold increase in cycling rate.
The London-listed battery technology developer said the results support progression towards commercial qualification in defence, aerospace and drone applications.
NLR is the US Department of Energy's primary national laboratory for critical minerals, energy innovation and energy security.
The testing took place under a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) between Gelion and NLR, announced previously, in June, under which the laboratory is validating NES in the US market and Gelion US is building a pilot-scale cathode active material plant using an all-domestic supply chain.
NLR fabricated electrodes from Gelion's NES material, assembled coin cells using the company's baseline lithium-metal anode platform, and reproduced the voltage profile, sulfur utilisation and capacity fade seen in Gelion's own laboratory testing.
Gelion said the result matters because a cathode material intended for third-party manufacturers must demonstrate reproducible performance outside the developer's own facilities, and that the NLR data adds to testing already carried out through programmes with TDK and QinetiQ.
The 92% capacity retention at a 20-fold cycling-rate increase, from 0.1C to 2C, complements earlier testing by QinetiQ, which built independent NES lithium-sulfur pouch cells that sustained continuous 3C discharge representative of drone cruise and repeated 6C pulses representative of vertical take-off and landing, with closely aligned voltage profiles over 50 repeated missions.
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Matthew Keyser, Electrochemical Energy Storage lead at NLR, said the results provide "a solid basis for progressing NLR's validation programme" and support the broader goal of secure US battery supply chains based on domestic materials.
Gelion chief executive Matt Wood said: "Having independent validation of both our internal capacity results and such exceptional rate performance supports the already-strong case for deploying Gelion's NES in applications that require both high energy and high-power delivery, such as drones, defence, and aerospace."
The next stage of the CRADA programme covers development and validation of larger-format commercial pouch-cell prototypes at NLR's facility in Golden, Colorado, with the longer-term goal of supporting qualification for US government and defence procurement and domestic manufacturing capability.