Nov. 29—MOSES LAKE — Sila Nanotechnologies officially opened its Moses Lake plant Wednesday with a crowd that included employees, community members, state Reps. Tom Dent and Alex Ybarra and Gov. Jay Inslee. An aide to Sen. Patty Murray read a message from the senator, and Sen. Maria Cantwell congratulated Sila by video.
"This moment has been 12 years in the making," said Gene Berdichevsky, co-founder and CEO of Sila.
"And the journey to this point can be summed up, really, in two words: passion and persistence. Many startups have origin stories that began in a garage, but we were not that cool. We started out in a windowless basement lab of Georgia Tech. Back then there were only 13 of us, working shoulder to shoulder back to back literally intent on doing what we believed — what many believed — was impossible."
That not-impossible feat was developing a nano-composite silicon that could increase the efficiency of lithium-ion batteries, for electric vehicles and other applications. Berdichevsky, who said he was the seventh employee at Tesla when it started, founded Sila along with fellow Tesla alum Alex Jacobs and Gleb Yushin, professor of materials science at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Sila, which has a small production facility in Alameda, California, purchased the 600,000-square-foot building at 3741 Road N NE last year. The building had previously belonged to Xyleco and before that Guardian Fiberglass, neither of which ever actually used it, according to Construction Manager Steve Hastings.
Sila's product is called Titan Silicon, and it's designed to replace the graphite that's the standard material used in battery anodes.
"The silicon anode is incredibly hard to get right," Berdichevsky told the Columbia Basin Herald in an interview. "But if you get it right — and we have — you can store 20-40% more energy in every battery that you make ... and over the next few years, we'll get that up to 30% and 40%."
"You've got to understand what 20% increase in density means," Inslee told the crowd. "It means 20% increased mileage for electric cars. If you took the zero out of there and it was 2%, it (would deserve) the Heisman trophy and the Nobel Peace Prize, both. Twenty percent is a quantum leap for humans, not just the state of Washington."
Inslee also invoked his gubernatorial authority to designate Sila Construction Manager Ron Roth as Washingtonian of the Day.
Replacing graphite with silicon is also a way of reducing dependence on foreign imports, explained Giulia Siccardo, director of the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Manufacturing and Energy Supply Chains.