China refines more than 90% of the graphite and 85% of the cobalt that go into the world’s lithium-ion batteries — a grip so complete that two of the periodic table’s least glamorous elements have become the West’s most acute energy vulnerability.
Pure Lithium, a World Economic Forum Pioneer, has developed a cobalt- and graphite-free battery approach — a technology bet that sidesteps two of China’s strongest choke points rather than competing for supply with them. The Chicago-based scale-up, which has more than 160 patents and patent applications, is advancing toward the production of a commercially viable lithium metal battery, with target applications including grid-scale energy storage, data centers, micro-mobility, drones, personal electronic devices, electric vehicles and aerospace.
It believes its technology could enable not just North America but Saudi Arabia, Australia and African nations to source battery ingredients locally and become major battery hubs, helping the world keep pace with energy transition demand. (See the companion story on the battery bottleneck).
“China controls all the raw materials and can set the price. It has an unfair advantage over any other country,” says Pure Lithium founder and CEO Emilie Bodoin. “If you want to leapfrog China, which is hard to do because of their resilience, speed and ability to scale and commercialize, you have to develop new technology.”
Lithium metal is not new, but Pure Lithium’s technology approach is. The breakthrough that produced the earliest form of the modern Li-ion battery was made by British chemist Nobel Laureate Professor Sir M. Stanley Whittingham, who created the first functional rechargeable lithium battery, using a lithium metal anode paired with titanium disulfide (TiS2) cathode material, which has a layered structure that can take in lithium ions without significant changes to its crystal structure. Some companies tried to commercialize this battery in the late 1970s but found the synthesis expensive and complex. More prohibitively, the batteries were also prone to spontaneously catch fire due to the presence of dendrites forming from metallic lithium in the cells. For this, and other reasons, development was discontinued.
Whittingham’s lithium metal anode technology had 10X the energy density of the graphite anode used in today’s lithium-ion battery. But the system with TiS2 at only two volts is too low of voltage for today’s applications, . “I became obsessed with why it hadn’t been commercialized,” she says, “and realized in my research that the problem was in large part due to the cost and the quality of the existing lithium metal, and that it did not come in the form of a battery electrode, which is non-trivial to make.” Bodoin set out to solve those issues. “My goal was really to enable the next gen battery based on lithium metal in the fastest, most sustainable way,” she says.
Thirteen years later, in 2025, Pure Lithium won the 2025 Green Chemistry Challenge Award from the American Chemical Society for its “Brine to Batter“ technology. Pure Lithium’s Brine to Battery method, which produces 99.9% pure battery-ready lithium-metal anodes in a single step, using electrodeposition technology directly from concentrated real-world lithium brines — skipping the traditional lithium compound production, which is typically a multi-step, water- and energy-intensive extraction and refining process that takes over a year, required to make the lithium compounds used in today’s batteries and as precursors for lithium metal today.
This enables co-location of feedstock, extraction and manufacturing in one domestic facility, speeding up U.S.-based lithium-metal anode and battery production.
“Our vertically integrated anode technology results in a high-purity lithium metal anode, contributing to exceptional battery performance,” says Bodoin.
What’s more, by vertically integrating lithium metal anode and battery production, the company says it captures margin at every stage of manufacturing, eliminates costly transportation, handling, third-party markups and material degradation, dramatically reducing overall battery production costs.
Lithium metal anodes replace the graphite anode used in today’s lithium-ion battery. Half the volume and weight of the lithium-ion battery is graphite, more than 90% of which comes from China. Lithium metal has ten times higher specific capacity than graphite, translating into a battery that is at least half the weight and twice the capacity of today’s lithium-ion, says Bodoin.
Additionally, the company’s battery has the first ever China-free supply chain, she says. It does not contain graphite, cobalt, nickel or manganese. “Our battery materials are sourced locally, enabling battery production in global hubs without exposure to volatile tariffs, export bans and other factors complicating today’s battery supply chain,” she says. “This will level the playing field and allow new countries to emerge as participants in battery manufacturing.”
Other companies working on new chemistry approaches to batteries include Panasonic, Samsung, LG Chem, SK, SESAI, Factorial, Quantumscape, and Solid Power but none of these approaches achieve the same independence from China, she says.
Pure Lithium, is building a pilot production facility in Chicago and is in “active discussions’ with partners to help commercialize the technology, she says. These include battery manufacturers, automotive, consumer electronic, grid scale, defense, drone and robotic companies. “It is easier to deliver smaller batteries quickly, because you produce smaller formats before advancing on to larger formats at scale, so we will sensibly go to market in applications that require smaller formats before advancing on to those requiring larger format batteries, Bodoin says.
CATL, China’s largest battery company, is also working on a lithium-metal battery. “In a paper CATL published recently, the data shows that our lab scale batteries works better than their lab scale batteries, “says Bodoin. She says the Chinese company’s batteries can only get to 500 cycles at 5:C/1:C before dropping to 80% capacity , whereas Pure Lithium batteries have achieved over 8500 cycles at 1:C/1:C,with negligible capacity fade, retaining upwards of 95% capacity. We do not use excess lithium or flood the battery with electrolyte, our single layer pouch cells are designed to be utilized in real world applications, using the same pressure as today’s lithium-ion battery does. We have third party data showing thousands of cycles retaining literally 100% capacity which is unheard of in the space.
Pure Lithium targets production at gigawatt hour scale by 2031.
Pure Lithium has a joint patent with Nobel Laureate Whittingham. If Bodoin has her way she will see this invention scale.
