Shares in Gelion PLC (AIM:GELN, OTC:GELNF, FRA:X0S), the sulfur battery company, rose 16% to 20.52p after it announced a three-year collaboration with Nissan and the University of Oxford to develop next-generation solid-state electric vehicle batteries using its proprietary Nano-Encapsulated Sulfur cathode technology.
The £3.4 million project, named CoRe-SoLiS, has secured £2.4 million in combined grant funding from Innovate UK under its Battery Innovation Concept Development Round 1 competition, with £1.6 million awarded directly to Gelion's UK subsidiary.
The project centres on integrating Gelion's NES cathode into solid-state battery cells, replacing nickel and cobalt with sulfur, a material the company describes as abundantly available and free from supply chain constraints.
Solid-state batteries replace the liquid electrolytes used in conventional lithium-ion cells with solid alternatives, offering potential advantages in safety, energy density and durability.
Gelion says its NES technology overcomes historical limitations associated with sulfur-based batteries, including poor cycle life and power output, which have previously hampered commercial adoption.
The University of Oxford will contribute advanced anode materials and cell-level expertise to the project, while Nissan Technical Centre Europe will provide solid-state battery development capabilities informed by its automotive performance and safety requirements.
The collaboration aligns with Nissan's EV36Zero programme centred on its Sunderland manufacturing hub, and Gelion says results from the project will inform future scale-up and commercialisation efforts.
Chief executive John Wood said the project combined what he described as the two primary opportunities to push battery performance boundaries: solid-state architecture and sulfur cathode materials.
Gelion also holds research collaborations with TDK in Japan, QinetiQ, the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces in Germany, and Nissan Technical Centre Europe.
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