In late 2024, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) awarded $50 million over the next five years to establish the Low-cost Earth-abundant Na-ion Storage (LENS) consortium. The LENS Consortium, funded by the DOE Vehicle Technologies Office, aims to discover, develop, and demonstrate a new class of sodium-ion batteries (NIBs). These NIBs will be designed to match or surpass the specific energy and energy density of current graphite/lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries, while also having a long life and low cost. The LENS Consortium’s goal is to minimize — and ultimately eliminate — reliance on critical elements. To achieve this goal, the Consortium will develop a comprehensive understanding of the challenges encountered in current NIB materials — including the role of the electrode, electrolyte, interfaces, inactive materials, and interactions at the device — enabling researchers to design a new generation of batteries that alleviate current performance limitations.

LENS has assembled a world-class team from the following national laboratories and universities:

National Laboratories

• Argonne National Laboratory 
• Brookhaven National Laboratory 
• Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
• Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
• Sandia National Laboratory
• SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory 

Universities 

• Florida State University
• University of California San Diego
• University of Houston*
• University of Illinois Chicago*
• University of Maryland*
• University of Rhode Island
• University of Wisconsin-Madison*
• Virginia Tech
       * Designated as a minority-serving institution (MSI)  

This team of six national labs and eight universities, including four minority serving institutions (MSIs), collectively possesses decades of experience studying and developing novel materials for sodium-ion batteries (NIBs). Each member of our team has been carefully chosen to fill a critical need to ensure rapid improvement to NIB technology. The team brings expertise in new material discovery, controlled synthesis, cost-effective scale-up, reproducible cell assembly from coin to 2-Ah pouch cells, comprehensive cell design and testing, multimodal characterization, technoeconomic analysis (TEA), and modeling across scales.