Europe's Battery Revival Runs Through Nanometres, Not Gigafactories

Dutch nanotech firm LeydenJar will begin commercial-scale production of pure silicon battery anodes at the end of 2026, offering up to 50% gains in energy density, charging speed and battery life, according to the company.

The Eindhoven-based startup, which spent 10 years perfecting a plasma deposition technique that builds anodes one nanometre at a time, is the highest-profile bet in a growing cluster of European Deep Tech companies applying semiconductor manufacturing know-how to batteries.

"A lot of people talk theoretically about ecosystems; I can tell you this is one of our sources of competitive advantage," LeydenJar chief executive Christian Rood said.

Named after an 18th-century precursor to the electric cell, LeydenJar grew up in the shadow of ASML and other semiconductor giants. Rood argues that crossover is the company's defining edge.

"It's really the crossover from semiconductors to batteries that makes us different — once you've demonstrated the principle in the lab, industrialization requires you to work with the semiconductor technology and suppliers," he said.

Can silicon anodes really work?

Pure silicon can store far more lithium than the graphite used in today's anodes, but it swells and cracks with each charge cycle. LeydenJar's plasma process deposits an ultra-thin pure silicon foil that holds its shape.

"Where normally a pure silicon anode would fall apart, [this] remains stable, so it was a very wonderful invention," Rood said. "We address the bottleneck in the battery."

What went wrong for Europe's first battery bets?

The pitch comes after two high-profile European battery failures. Sweden's Northvolt and Norway's Morrow both filed for insolvency, fuelling concerns that the continent missed the lithium-ion shift that lifted China and South Korea to dominance.

Rood does not pretend the market is forgiving. "If you can make this work, it touches so many industries [but] it's a risky business," he said.

LeydenJar is not trying to build a full battery. It aims to sell a differentiated component — much like ASML sells lithography machines rather than chips — into a global supply chain.

"This is our ambition as well — to have a position where our battery anode is so unique that we have an important position in the supply chain," Rood said.

What about the rest of the supply chain?

A few dozen kilometres west, in Delft, fellow Dutch startup Powall is attacking a different problem: premature battery aging.

Chief executive Roderik Colen says nanocoatings applied to the cathode powders inside today's batteries can slow the degradation that hits cells after thousands of cycles. The technique, atomic layer deposition, also borrows from chipmaking.

"Your battery works less well than before after using it thousands of times — that degrading or aging can be slowed down when you're using a nanocoating," Colen said.

The bigger opportunity, he argues, is enabling the next generation of high-capacity chemistries that die in the field before they reach mass production.

"You can have an exciting new material with a higher capacity or fast charging, all these novel developments. They typically have one element which is very good, but they suffer on the durability side," Colen said. "That's where we then come in, to give them the protective coating to effectively enable these new materials."

Powall already sells equipment commercially and counts customers in Asia.

How does this fit Europe's broader strategy?

Alexander Brown, a senior analyst at the Berlin-based Mercator Institute for China Studies (Merics), said a Europe-anchored niche at the high-margin end of the chain would be valuable.

"I think having one part of the supply chain based in Europe is great and if that can be a very advanced technological part, which offers the opportunity for high margins, that's fantastic," Brown said.

But he warned against treating it as a full industrial strategy. China, he noted, is actively working to replace every foreign input it relies on, ASML's lithography machines included.

"It's no secret that China would love to replace ASML. They're working very hard to do that, and it's not unforeseeable that they will achieve that goal eventually," Brown said. "I think Europe has traditional strengths in developing very exquisite high-quality products, which can find markets all over the world. But I also think it's important for that not to be the only strategy."

Can Europe fund Deep Tech at the pace it needs?

Rood said capital exists in Europe, but risk appetite lags behind the US and Asia. LeydenJar stitches together grants, debt, European Investment Bank support and equity to keep moving.

"There is sufficient financing in Europe, but the risk attitude is quite different than in Asia and in the US," Rood said. "They set a lot of challenging conditions, and they all want to do their own due diligence. It's hard work."

Powall's Colen is more bullish. "It's a relatively young industry where factories are being built left, right and centre. They're searching for the right tech. So that's where you can play a big role, because the volumes are huge," he said.

Europe's gigafactory ambitions may be stalling, but the continent's chipmaking heritage is seeding a parallel play at the nanometre scale. The question now is whether two-year funding cycles and ten-year product cycles can ever be reconciled — and whether China reaches the same niche first.