First note: silicon anodes, dry coating and AI-guided electrodes

This is the first note on this blog. I follow battery research from the electrode manufacturing side, and each week I will collect papers, start-ups, reports and industry needs worth reading. Every item below carries its own date, because some are a few weeks old.

Start-ups and funding

Nexeon (UK, silicon anode materials) announced a £100 million round on 31 August 2026. The National Wealth Fund committed £52.6 million, with the Korea Development Bank and Honda Xcelerator Ventures also investing. The company says the money supports a UK pilot manufacturing facility, R&D and scale-up toward high-volume manufacturing. Silicon anodes matter because they promise higher energy density, which can mean faster charging and longer range. Nexeon announcement, BusinessCloud

Electrode manufacturing: dry coating

Dry coating skips the solvent and the drying oven, which is the most energy-hungry part of electrode production. It is moving from announcements to research lines. In November 2025, BREYER was selected to supply its IONDry 600 system to Fraunhofer FFB, designed for coating speeds of at least 20 m/min at 400 mm width and with integrated sensors for real-time monitoring and closed-loop control. EV Engineering & Infrastructure

Fraunhofer IWS lists a Dry Coating Forum in Dresden on 10 and 11 November 2026, and a project on fluorine-free binders for dry electrode coating. Fraunhofer IWS

For process monitoring, the pattern is clear: as dry lines scale, inline sensing and closed-loop control will matter as much as the process itself.

Paper to read

An arXiv listing (cs.LG, 2 June 2026) by Du, Sullivan, Saal and Huber describes an iterative AI-guided workflow for graphite anode development on the Citrine Platform. Starting from a noisy, incomplete dataset, feedback on feasibility and failed process boundaries moved fabrication from frequent failures to 100% successful cell production. The authors report the share of cells delivering at least 350 mAh/g rising from 28.4% to 84.8%. I have read the abstract only, so treat the numbers as the authors' claims until the full paper is checked. Paper listing

Recycling and reports

A Fortune Business Insights report (updated 13 July 2026) sizes the black mass recycling market at USD 12.13 billion in 2026 with an 11.5% CAGR to 2034. Market-size reports vary a lot in method and definitions, so read this as an order of magnitude, not a fact. Fortune Business Insights

Key Takeaway

Funding keeps flowing to materials such as silicon anodes, dry coating is gaining research-line hardware, and data-driven workflows are reporting measurable yield gains. That combination is where digital process monitoring has the most to offer.