Linxens, SmartNanotubes Create Early Warning Sensor for Li-on Battery

SmartNanotubes Technologies, a startup that has developed the world’s first electronic nose chip “Smell iX16” for mass market applications, and Linxens, a global leader in smart card technology, RFID tags and reel-to-reel flexible electronics, united their efforts to develop a disruptive early warning sensor for Li-ion batteries in electric vehicles.

With exponentially growing numbers of electric vehicles worldwide, the danger of fires caused by out-of-control Li-ion batteries increases dramatically. Recently a car-carrying freight ship caught fire on the North Sea when one electric vehicle ignited. Tugboats could tow the ship into a Dutch port, but this could have had severe ecological consequences for the coast of the Netherlands.

Thus far, there is no reliable solution to give an early warning of the battery runaway phenomenon. Linxens and SmartNanotubes will be the first to addressing this issue and providing a solution by detecting gases emitted early on in this process. The latter contributes through its unique smell detection technology, whereby Linxens brings in their expertise in miniaturization and mass-fabrication of flexible electronics.

“The Li-ion battery monitoring market is a huge market, which provides tremendous scalability. By solving the early detection problem in case of an outgassing event in Li-ion batteries, our common development will save lives and prevent severe infrastructure damages. Together with Linxens as a partner we can produce tens of thousands of EV battery runaway sensors already by next year,” says Viktor Bezugly, CEO and co-founder of SmartNanotubes Technologies. “Moreover, the miniaturization of our chip down to 7x7mm size opens a new possibility of application of our e-nose technology in wearable and mobile devices.”

SmartNanotubes sensing technology can detect outgassing from Li-ion battery cells types several minutes before their thermal runaway, and in some cases up to 20 min in advance. The very early detection from two different battery types was successfully demonstrated.

Linxens and SmartNanotubes have developed and successfully tested the first prototype of a miniaturized sensor module which will be the main component of the future product.

“Smell and complex gases recognition requires a unique combination of transducers matrix with signal filtering and machine learning methods. Linxens will bring its expertise in large volume manufacturing of electrochemical electrodes to develop thin, flexible and cost effective transducers’ matrix based on SmartNanotube sensing technologies,” added Roland Guillemain, VP of R&D and innovation at Linxens.

The SmartNanotubes’ e-nose technology is mimicking a human nose in terms of the principle of smell detection. Instead of receptors of a biological nose, the smell detector chip has a variety of fine-tuned nanomaterials as sensing elements, which ensure an outstanding sensitivity, highly compact structure and close to zero power consumption. AI-based software is responsible for a real-time recognition of odor-specific signal patterns read from the detector chip.