Yuanhe Origin leads the investment, and sulfide solid-state electrolyte material provider "Tian Shi Ke Feng" completes a pre-Series A financing of tens of millions of yuan | Exclusive report from 36Kr

Text | Zhang Bingbing

Editor | A Zhi

36Kr has learned that Wuhan TianShiKeFeng New Energy Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "TianShiKeFeng") recently announced the completion of a pre-A round of financing worth tens of millions of yuan. The round was led by Yuanhe Origin, with Tianhong Investment participating. Qichen Capital served as the long-term financial advisor. This round of financing will be mainly used for product R & D and the establishment of a hundred-ton production line.

TianShiKeFeng was established in December 2022, focusing on the R & D and production of sulfide solid electrolyte powder materials. The technology was incubated at Wuhan University of Technology and Justus Liebig University Giessen in Germany. It has developed sulfide electrolyte powder with good air stability and a room-temperature ionic conductivity of 12 mS/cm, as well as LPSCB-based composite electrolyte membranes with a room-temperature ionic conductivity of 3 mS/cm and a thickness of 20 μm.

As a supplier of upstream powder materials for sulfide solid-state batteries, TianShiKeFeng has reached out to leading battery cell customers and more than 40 top universities at home and abroad. It has built a ton-scale production line and is expected to establish a hundred-ton production line and achieve revenues exceeding 100 million yuan in 2026.

I. Performance Breakthrough: Achieving Both High Conductivity and Air Stability

Wang Shuo, the founder and chief scientist of TianShiKeFeng, is an associate professor at Wuhan University of Technology. He has been researching sulfide solid electrolytes and all-solid-state batteries for 10 years and has applied for more than a dozen related patents. When looking back on the company's founding process, Wang Shuo said that the market demand for solid-state batteries has forced the R & D of powder materials. "At that time, a company researching sulfide all-solid-state battery cells couldn't find suitable powder with high conductivity on the market. The small-batch products we developed at school had good test results. To further expand the production scale, we established TianShiKeFeng."

Sulfide electrolytes are one of the mainstream routes for solid-state battery technology. Their core advantage lies in having an ultra-high ionic conductivity that can surpass traditional liquid electrolytes. They also have good mechanical ductility, which can better solve the problem of solid-solid contact in solid-state battery electrolytes. However, the safety, stability, and cost issues of sulfide electrolytes have become the main obstacles to their large-scale production and commercialization, and have also put forward more stringent requirements for upstream materials.

Wang Shuo introduced that TianShiKeFeng improves the performance of sulfide electrolyte powder through means such as material doping, coating, and the development of new systems. In terms of improving ionic conductivity, mainly through raw material selection and proportioning, and using the anion high-entropy strategy, the cold-pressed ionic conductivity of TianShiKeFeng's LPSCB sulfide electrolyte powder reaches 13 mS/cm, and the conductivity of the sulfide ceramic sheet after hot pressing reaches 25 mS/cm. In terms of stability, through the hard and soft acid-base theory and coating strategy, it has developed stability-improved products and obtained patent authorizations, achieving the improvement of air stability while ensuring high ionic conductivity.

TianShiKeFeng's sulfide electrolyte powder materials

In addition, TianShiKeFeng has developed amorphous system products, which have good processing performance and are easy to form films, and are stable against lithium metal anodes. At the same time, it can produce powder with different particle sizes, with the minimum particle size reaching 300 nm, and can provide dry-process products with small and medium particle sizes.

In terms of cost, TianShiKeFeng has optimized from three aspects: equipment, process, and raw materials. "In terms of raw materials, we have relatively strict supply chain management. We pursue simplicity in both raw materials and processes, because the more complex the process, the more difficult it is to mass-produce. The rapid mixing and heat treatment processes we developed are relatively more time-saving and energy-efficient," Wang Shuo summarized.

Regarding the future price reduction potential, Wang Shuo believes that currently, the production capacity of lithium sulfide, a raw material, is limited. In the future, with the mass production of the entire industrial chain, there is still room for cost reduction, which will drive down the prices of downstream products. In the future, sulfide electrolytes can achieve the same price as solid-liquid electrolytes.

II. Keeping Pace with Customers and Establishing a Hundred-Ton Production Line

The time for the implementation of solid-state batteries is a key focus in the industry. Previously, Ouyang Minggao, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, proposed at a media conference that from the end of this year to next year, test vehicles for all-solid-state batteries will be launched one after another, but it will still take 3 - 5 years to achieve large-scale mass production.

Regarding the industrialization of all-solid-state batteries, Ouyang Minggao divided the technological evolution into three generations: from 2025 to 2027 is the first generation, focusing on graphite/low-silicon anode sulfide batteries, with a target energy density of 200 - 300 Wh/kg. The core task is to connect the entire chain of technologies; from 2027 to 2030, it will enter the second generation, achieving an energy density target of 400 Wh/kg with a high-silicon anode, targeting the next generation of passenger cars; from 2030 to 2035, it will move towards the third generation of lithium anode technology, aiming for an ultra-high energy density of 500 Wh/kg.

According to the current general industry expectations, it will still take time for the upstream materials of solid-state batteries to see a significant increase in demand. TianShiKeFeng's commercial expansion strategy is to "follow the customers." Wang Shuo believes that upstream enterprises in the solid-state battery industry must closely grow with customers, which requires the enterprise to have strong R & D capabilities and engineering capabilities, and be able to cooperate at any time when there are new demands to jointly promote product R & D. Currently, TianShiKeFeng has reached out to a group of leading automobile and battery cell customers and has achieved the batch shipment of several tons of sulfide electrolytes.

Based on this, TianShiKeFeng continuously matches and builds production capacity according to customer needs and R & D progress. In 2025, TianShiKeFeng will establish a ten-ton production line. In 2026, it will expand to a hundred-ton production line. Currently, it has built a production line with an annual output of 60 tons, which will reach 200 tons by the end of the year and expand to a thousand-ton scale next year. In this process, TianShiKeFeng will ensure product and supply stability through the strategy of optimizing the existing production line process and building new production lines simultaneously.

In addition, TianShiKeFeng plans to increase R & D efforts this year, widely recruit R & D talents from universities, and enhance its R & D strength. On the one hand, it will improve product quality, and on the other hand, it will enhance the production line construction ability. At the same time, it is deploying in the fields of new adhesives and halides. There are already preliminary results, and it will develop into a platform company in the future, continuously investing in R & D for all-solid-state materials.

Wang Shuo introduced that TianShiKeFeng has currently achieved profitability. According to the current customer orders, it is expected to achieve revenues exceeding 100 million yuan in 2026.

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This article is from the WeChat official account "36Kr Future Industries". The authors are Zhang Bingbing and A Zhi. It is reprinted with permission from 36Kr.