The inauguration took place on November 19, 2021, and was attended by Thierry Le Hénaff, Chairman and CEO of Arkema, as well as numerous customers and partners. The Group has opened a new Center of Excellence dedicated to batteries for clean mobility at its research center in Pierre‑Bénite, France. This multi‑technology and multi-product space is entirely geared toward developing advanced materials and processes for the batteries of the future. Called Christian Collette in memory of the Group’s Head of Research who died in 2021, this center benefits from state‑of‑the‑art equipment, including a dry room, an electrode manufacturing line and a pilot line dedicated to the preproduction of the next generations of electrolyte salts. Arkema's teams, in collaboration with their academic and industrial partners, are addressing a range of short‑term and medium‑term technological challenges: binders for next‑generation active materials (high‑nickel or high‑manganese), silicon‑enriched anodes, high‑voltage batteries and “solid‑state” batteries.
