CARMERY America completed tens of millions of dollars in angel round financing to accelerate the development of hard carbon industrialization.

Recently, CARMERY New Materials (Huzhou) Co., Ltd. successfully completed tens of millions of yuan of angel round financing, this round of financing by China Merchants Zhiyuan Capital, Pengkun New Energy, Softbank China Capital, Nuclear Gathering Capital, Lihe Capital and other joint investment. This round of funds are mainly used for the construction of thousand-ton hard carbon production lines and research and development centers, marketing and team building.

CARMERYi was established in December 2022. At the beginning of its establishment, it received seed round investment from Kaifeng Venture Capital and Zhuhai Guanzhi. It was established less than a year ago. With its systematic and institutionalized team and independent innovation technical strength, it has continuously won the attention and support of the capital market.

CARMERY was founded by Chen Chengmeng, a doctor jointly trained by Shanxi Institute of Coal Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences and Fritz Haber Institute of German Maputo Institute. It is an innovative enterprise dedicated to carbon-based energy storage material solutions, integrating R & D, production and sales. The company is oriented to energy storage, electric vehicles, construction machinery, two-tricycles and base stations and other application scenarios, with lithium-ion batteries, sodium-ion battery negative materials as the main direction, to provide users with high capacity, high rate, long life and low-cost hard carbon materials. At present, the company has a complete basic research, material development, device assembly and performance evaluation platform, which can provide users with customized material application solutions.

Plan of Guoke Carbon Beauty Research and Development Center

Policy and market blessing

Hard carbon market ushered in a period of rapid development

In recent years, with the improvement of the performance of lithium-ion batteries and the rapid growth of demand, the application of sodium-ion batteries has accelerated, and new anode materials have become the key. In January of this year, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other six departments jointly issued the "Guiding Opinions on Promoting the Development of the Energy Electronics Industry", emphasizing the strengthening of new energy storage battery industrialization technology research, and promoting the large-scale application of advanced energy storage technology and products. Among them, it is mentioned that: support the development of ultra-long-life and high-security energy storage lithium-ion batteries, focus on low cost and high safety of batteries, strengthen the research of positive and negative materials such as hard carbon, electrolyte and other main materials and related auxiliary materials, develop * modular system integration technology, and accelerate the breakthrough and large-scale application of sodium ion battery technology.

At the same time, energy storage technology as a key support for energy transformation, its development can not be separated from the battery materials. Different from highly crystalline graphite, hard carbon has a special amorphous structure, which has higher lithium/sodium storage capacity, better low temperature, fast charging, cycle and safety performance. As a new type of carbon-based energy storage material, hard carbon is the only anode material with commercial prospects in the field of sodium ion batteries, and can also be applied to fast-charging lithium-ion batteries, capacitive batteries and lithium-ion capacitors, with a broad market space and high growth. According to CICC's research report, "The market space for hard carbon materials is expected to reach 6.3 billion yuan by 2025." With policy assistance and market demand traction, the market size of hard carbon materials will continue to grow.

Due to the short development cycle of the domestic hard carbon industry, there is still a big gap with foreign countries. In the face of the vast blue ocean market, taking the lead in achieving technological breakthroughs will become the key for enterprises to change lanes and overtake. Based on this, Guoke Tanmei has built a strong technical backing since its establishment. The company has established a strategic cooperation relationship with Shanxi Coal Chemical Institute and has a leading material research and development platform, covering material simulation design, small-scale and pilot-scale technology development, physical and chemical performance testing, soft-package electrochemical performance testing, etc., which can continuously inject innovative momentum into the company's development.

Team of Whole Establishment Scientists Pilotage

Promote the development of hard carbon industrialization

At present, CARMERY has an integrated team of more than 40 people composed of "scientists, engineers and managers". The main members of the founding team are from Shanxi Institute of Coal and Chemical Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences. The core backbone has been deeply engaged in the field of carbon materials and electrochemistry for many years, with solid basic research ability and rich engineering experience. The founder, Dr. Chen Chengmeng, has been engaged in basic research and application technology development of advanced carbon materials for a long time. He is a winner of the National Outstanding Youth Fund and a candidate of "35 people under the age of 35" in China of MIT Science and Technology Review. Guoke Carbon Beauty has independent intellectual property rights through the transfer and transformation of achievements, and has successfully developed core technologies such as structural modification, microcrystalline regulation and purification, laying a solid technical foundation for the company's material research and development and application innovation.

Dr. Chen Chengmeng, Founder of Guoke Tanmei

With excellent technical research and development strength, Guoke Charcoal US has successfully developed a series of hard carbon products such as GHC-A300, B280 and C300 using biomass, coal and asphalt as raw materials respectively. Among them, the biomass-based hard carbon uses starch, lignin and cellulose and other bulk biomass derivatives as the precursor, the source is stable and reliable, high purity, the prepared hard carbon has a high capacity. Coal-based hard carbon uses cheap coal as raw material, with a yield of more than 50%, so it has a very high cost performance and can meet the cost reduction needs of the two/three-wheeled vehicle field. For passenger cars and large-scale energy storage and other areas of high cycle life requirements, the team broke through the asphalt depth purification, component control and molecular modification and other common key technologies, through the asphalt-based hard carbon process. According to the user evaluation, the pitch-based hard carbon shows the advantages of high available capacity, high compaction density, high conductivity and long cycle. In addition, relying on its own electrochemical energy storage device assembly and evaluation platform, the system application solution of the material can be output to the user.

The company's 1000-ton lithium/sodium battery anode material project will be completed and put into operation by the end of this year. After the project is put into operation, it can alleviate the unfavorable situation of my country's hard carbon restricted by imports and tight market supply to a certain extent.

Dr. Chen Chengmeng, founder of Guoke Charcoal Beauty, said: "Guoke Charcoal Beauty will take hard carbon as the starting point, focus on carbon-based energy storage materials, adhere to independent innovation and research and development iteration, and further layout of porous carbon, graphite and carbon black and other products. At the same time, relying on the Shanxi Institute of Coal and Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, to integrate superior resources, accelerate the transfer and transformation of achievements in the field of carbon materials, and build an international leading carbon materials platform enterprise. The company will provide reliable carbon material solutions for new energy, electric vehicles, aerospace and other industries with innovative technologies, and contribute to global" carbon neutrality "and major national needs."

China Merchants Zhiyuan Capital said: "Sodium ion battery is an important supplement to the existing lithium battery system, in the eve of large-scale mass production, despite repeated fluctuations in lithium prices, low cost and safety and other inherent advantages to promote its industrialization progress rapidly, the main material reduction prospects are more than expected. The National Science and Technology Corporation, led by Dr. Chen Chengmeng, has a deep accumulation in the field of carbon materials. It is a rare team with platform-based carbon material research and development and industrialization. At the same time, it has promoted a variety of precursor categories of biomass, coal-based and asphalt-based, and has reached the performance performance of leading foreign enterprises with highly competitive cost and mass production methods, leaving a deep impression on us. China Merchants Zhiyuan Capital is very honored to help Guoke Carbon Beauty, will use its own research and layout in the new energy industry, in-depth integration of industrial resources, coordinate and promote the commercial success of Guoke Carbon Beauty in the sodium ion industry from 1 to 100 stages."

Xu Xiangjun, general manager of Pengyi New Energy Investment, said: "The National Science and Technology Carbon Beauty team has both basic research, technology research and development, engineering landing and commercialization capabilities. The core team is mostly doctoral degree, and has an average of more than 10 years of experience in carbon materials research and engineering. Its basic theoretical research ability and process application ability of carbon materials are impressive. The GHC-300 product developed by the team using asphalt as raw material has excellent dynamic performance,-30 ℃ discharge capacity retention rate> 83%,5C discharge capacity retention rate> 93%. We are also concerned about the contribution of its products to the modification gain of lithium battery anode materials."

Zhuge Qingchen, an investor in SoftBank China Capital, said: "We have been in the field of clean technology for more than 10 years, and we are very optimistic about the application prospects of sodium-ion batteries. As a just-needed material for sodium-ion batteries, the industrialization of hard carbon has attracted much attention, and the Guoke Charcoal team has a strong foundation in process technology and certain experience in the industrialization of energy storage carbon materials, which can transform scientific and technological achievements into solving practical problems of users."

Mr. He Ning, chairman of Nuclear Poly Capital, said: "Under the background of the goal of" 3060 and double carbon ", Guoke Carbon Beauty has formed a systematic and institutionalized basic research and achievement transformation team relying on more than ten years of profound technological research and development accumulation in the field of carbon materials by Shanxi Institute of Coal Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences. The company focuses on hard carbon negative materials for lithium batteries and sodium batteries, with outstanding engineering capability. It is believed that under the leadership of Dr. Chen, Guoke Tanmei, as the technological achievement transformation platform and resource linking platform of the Coal Chemical Institute, will provide customers with high-performance and low-cost product solutions around more application scenarios.

Zhang Shulue, a partner at Lihe Capital, said: "The low cost and safety advantages of sodium power have gained industry consensus, and hard carbon, with its unique microstructure, is seen as * suitable for sodium power negative. Guoke Charcoal Mei hatched from the Institute of Coal Chemical, Chinese Academy of Sciences, with decades of scientific research accumulation in the field of high-end carbon materials, the company's hard carbon products in capacity, cost and other aspects of the industry leader. In addition, the company also has capacitor carbon, porous carbon, graphene and other products of leading research and development and mass production capacity. Long-term bullish carbon beauty team to help the development of China's new energy industry."